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CAMBRIDGE STUDIES

MEDIEVAL LIFE AND THOUGHT

Edited by G. G. Coulton, M.A,

Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge

and University Lecturer in English

THE LOLLARD BIBLE

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, Manager
LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.G. 4

NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO.
BOMBAY \

CALCUTTA [ MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
MADRAS '

TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO.
OF CANADA, Ltd.

TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

THE LOLLARD BIBLE

AND OTHER MEDIEVAL
BIBLICAL VERSIONS

MARGARET DEANESLY, M.A.,

MARY BATESON FELLOW, NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

CAMBRIDGE

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920

GENERAL PREFACE

THERE is only too much truth in the frequent complaint
that history, as compared with the physical sciences, is
neglected by the modern public. But historians have the
remedy in their own hands; choosing problems of equal
importance to those of the scientist, and treating them with
equal accuracy, they will command equal attention, Thost
who insist that the proportion of accurately ascertainable
facts is smaller in history, and therefore the room for specu-
lation wider, do not thereby establish any essential dis-
tinction between truth-seeking in history and truth-seeking
in chemistry. The historian, whatever be his subject, is as
definitely bound as the chemist "to proclaim certainties as
certain, falsehoods as false, and uncertainties as dubious."
Those are the words, not of a modern scientist, but of the
seventeenth century monk, Jean Mabillon; they sum up his
literary profession of faith. Men will follow us in history as
implicitly as they follow the chemist, if only we will form
the chemist's habit of marking clearly where our facts end
and our inferences begin. Then the public, so far from dis-
couraging our speculations, will most heartily encourage
them ; for the most positive man of science is always grateful
to anyone who, by putting forward a working theory, stimu-
lates further discussion.

The present series, therefore, appeals directly to that
craving for clearer facts which has been bred in these times
of storm and stress. No care can save us altogether from
error; but, for our own sake and the public's, we have elected
to adopt a safeguard dictated by ordinary business common-
sense. Whatever errors of fact are pointed out by reviewers
or correspondents shall be publicly corrected with the least
possible delay. After a year of publication, all copies shall
be provided with such an erratum-slip without waiting for
the chance of a second edition ; and each fresh volume in this
series shall contain a full list of the errata noted in its

vi GENERAL PREFACE

predecessors. Thus, with the help of our critics, we may
reasonably hope to put forward these monographs as roughly
representing the most accurate information obtainable under
present conditions. Our facts being thus secured, the reader
will judge our inferences on their own merits; and something
will have been done to dissipate that cloud of suspicion
which hangs over too many important chapters in the social
and religious history of the Middle Ages.

Cx. G. C.

4 March 1920

• AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE history of mediaeval translations of the Vulgate,
their place in the social history of the time, and the
attitude of authority towards them, was suggested to me by
Mr G. G. Coulton as a subject needing investigation. I
should like here to express my gratitude to him for continuous
help and criticism during the years in which I have been
engaged on the work, for much kindness, and for many
suggestions.

I wish especially to thank Miss A. C. Panes for kind and
valuable help, as also Miss Hope Allen, Mr E. J. Thomas,
Mr- P. S. Allen and the officers of the University Press. I
should like finally to thank the councils of Merton College,
Oxford, and Trinity College, Cambridge, for permission to
print certain manuscripts.

With regard to the method of this study, though I have
often cited encyclopedias and certain reference manuals in
order to save space in suggesting bibliography, yet I have
always tried to cite original authorities in dealing with any
disputed or disputable point. Mediaeval surnames are
usually printed according to the modern form of the place
name, save in cases where a particular form of spelling has
already become widely accepted.

MARGARET DEANESLY
4 March 1920

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

The problem of the Middle-English Bible, and
the aim of this study

PAGE

§ I. Sir Thomas More's evidence : the questions raised . . i

§ 2. Passages from More's Dialogue bearing on the subject of

English Bibles ........ i

§ 3. Criticism of passages. Value of More's evidence as a

liberal catholic scholar, as a lawyer, and as a historian . 3

§ 4. Aim of this study: to put the history of English
biblical translations into its European background, and
to consider English mediaeval translations historically
from new material . . . . . . . 16

CHAPTER II

The prohibitions of vernacular Bible reading in
France, Italy and Spain

§ I. Distinction between literary translations and those
meant to popularise Bible reading. The refusal of
Gregory VII to allow the translation of parts of scripture,
1079 ......... 18

§ 2. Waldensianism in France: Lyons, c. 11 80; Metz, 1199;
Paris, 1 2 10; the south of France, Toulouse, 1229, Beziers,
1246 ......... 25

§ 3. Waldensianism in Italy . . . . . . 41

§ 4. Waldensianism in Spain: Tarragona, 1233; Tarragona,

1317 48

§ 5. The attitude of the mediaeval Church towards the popu-
lar use of biblical translations, and the preference for
other means of popular enlightenment • • • 55

«5

CONTENTS

CHAPTER III

The prohibitions of vernacular Bible reading in the Holy
Roman Empire and the Netherlands, before 1400

PAGE

§ I. The forwardness of the attitude of German orthodox
thought towards toleration of popular Bible reading, com-
pared to that of the rest of Europe . . . , 58

§ 2. Localisation of the toleration of German biblical books in
the Rhine country and the Netherlands : the demand here
not, as with the English Lollards, for vernacular Bibles,
but for vernacular spiritual books in general, including in
some cases the more plain and open books of the Bible.
Waldensianism in Germany: Trier: the inquisitor of
Passau ......... 60

§ 3. The controverted origin of the fourteenth century manu-
scripts of the New Testament ; their probable Latin source
a biblical text disused after the early thirteenth century;
the antiquity of a German tract accompanying one such
translation; the probable antiquity of the original Ger-
man translation a sign rather of Waldensian than ortho-
dox origin ........ 64

§ 4. Biblical translations in the Netherlands; the Beghards

and Maerlant ........ 68

§ 5. The Gottesfreunde and the later Beghards • • • 75

§ 6. The imperial prohibition of all vernacular scriptures in

1369; its modification by Gregory XI in 1375 . . 81

CHAPTER IV

Bible reading in the Empire and the Netherlands
c. 1400-1521

§ I. The Brethren of the Common Life; the determination of
the jurists of Cologne in 1398, given in their support,
in favour of translations; Henricson's Epistles of 1407;
Vomken; Scutken; Busch; the Dominican of Zutphen . 89

§ 2. The adversaries of biblical translations; Gerson; Jean le

Riche ; Geiler of Kay sersberg ; Sebastian Brandt . . 103

§ 3. Biblical translations in nunneries; the nunnery cata-
logues of Nuremberg and Delft; Bible owners, convents
and lay people ....... log

§ 4. German printed Bibles before 1521; the Gottesfreund
translator and Rellach; Mentel's printed Bible of 1466;
the Cologne Bible of 1480; the arguments that the
earliest German Bibles were never printed with the
approval of authority . . . . . .117

§ 5. Some approval for translations after 1508 . . .126

CONTENTS KL

CHAPTER V

Translations of parts of the Vulgate in England
before Wycliffe

PAGE

§ I. Precedents alleged in the Wycliflfite and post-Wyclififite

controversy over the lawfulness of biblical translations . 131

§ 2. Anglo-Saxon translations: as alleged, and as known to

us ......... . 132

§ 3. Translations 1066-1380, as alleged, and as known to us

(English and French, prose and verse) . . .140

CHAPTER VI

Pre-Wydiffite biblical study by clerks : {a) the higher clergy,

friars, monks

§ I . Connexion of the subject with the problem of the Middle-
English Bible ........ 156

§ 2. The clerks who became parish priests were not, normally,
university graduates, and frequently could not read Latin
freely .......... 158

§ 3. The biblical training and knowledge of those who could
read Latin freely : gradttate ordinands, destined usually to
become the higher clergy, canonists, university lecturers,
civil servants . . , . . . . .162

§ 4. Friars and the Bible . . . . . .164

§ 5. Monks and the Bible ...... 168

§ 6. The hooks available for biblical study by these three
classes, who formed the majority of those who could read
Latin freely . . . . . . . .174

§ 7. Individuals and biblical study . . . . .181

CHAPTER VII

PreWycliffite biblical study by clerks : (b) parish priests

§1

§2

§3
§4
§5

Their education; the biblical study in it; abc, grammar

and theology schools . . . . . .188

The episcopal examination on institution to a benefice;

the standard required . . . . . .193

Their sermons: not universal on Sundays before Wy-
cliffe's day, and not necessarily dealing with the Bible . 197
Manuals for priests did not suggest the need of the study
of the text of the Vulgate for priests or their parishioners 202

Parish priests of the period owned no books except service
books: no literary work by them .... 203

3EH CONTENTS

CHAPTER VIII

Pre-Wycliffite Bible reading by lay people

PAGE

§ I . The upper social classes spoke French till Wycliffe's day . 205
§ 2. The education of lay people; schools; plays . . 206

§ 3. Manuals for lay people do not mention Bible reading as a
duty or devotional practice; official manuals; Hilton's
Epistle on Mixed Life . . . . . .211

§ 4. The ownership of Vulgates, French and English Bibles,

and devotional books, by lay people .... 220

§ 5. Individuals and biblical study ..... 222

CHAPTER IX

Wycliffe as the instigator of a vernacular Bible

§ I. The connexion of Wycliffe's theory of "dominion by

grace" with the need of an English Bible . . . 225

§ 2. The novelty and justification of Wycliffe's attitude to-
wards Bible study by all men, including the simple . 228

§ 3. The Wycliffite circle at Oxford: Hereford, Repingdon,
Purvey, etc. ; contrast between the first generation of
Lollards, as typified by Wycliffe and Purvey, and the
second generation, as typified by Oldcastle . . .231

§ 4. Contemporary evidence of Wycliffe as the "instigator"

of a translation of the Bible ..... 238

§ 5. Passages in Wycliffe's Latin works referring to the need
of universal knowledge of the Bible, of translations of the
Bible, and to English translations as made . . . 240

§ 6. Evidence that Wycliffe's contemporaries knew of no

biblical translation besides his ..... 249

CHAPTER X

The two versions of the Wycliffite Bible, and the evidence

of the General Prologue as to the authorship of the

second version

§ I. The early version of Nicholas Hereford, finished c. 1384 252
§ 2. The General Prologue contains an account of the making
of the second version; it was written between Feb. 1395
and Feb. 1397 255

§ 3. Proof that the General Prologue describes the second ver-
sion as printed by Forshall and Madden, and refers to the
first one : and that it is the work of a single author, and not
a glossed or conflate tract . . . . .260

CONTENTS xui

PAGE

§ 4. The General Prologue was written by a man of great
learning, a Lollard undergoing persecution in 1395:
John Purvey was the only Lollard doctor, or learned
Lollard, holding out at the date, and must therefore have
been its author . . . . . . .266

CHAPTER XI

The controversy about the English Bible 1384-1408,
and the constittitions of 1408

§ I. An early Lollard tract (The holy prophet David saith...),
probably Wycliffe's, defending popular Bible reading,
c. 1378-82; Purvey's series of tracts also defending
English Bibles, c. 1382-90 ..... 268

§ 2. Purvey's glosses on the gospels, c. 1384-90: possessed by

queen Anne and approved by Arundel, before 1394 . 275

§ 3. Purvey's (later) version of the Bible, with the General
Prologue, finished 1395: the Lollard parliamentary effort
of 1395, and the bill against the English Bible, probably

1395 '.281

§ 4. Purvey's recantation, 1401 . . . . . 283

§ 5. Contemporary references to English Bibles, 1382-1401 286

§ 6. Oxford determinations: Butler's, 1401; Purvey and the
debate between Peter Payne (?) and Thomas Palmer,
c. 1405 ......... 289

§ 7. The constitutions of Oxford, Nov. 1407; confirmed 1408 294

CHAPTER XII

Biblical translations contemporary with
the Lollard versions

§ I. "Turners" and Trevisa. Caxton's guess at the author-
ship of the Wycliffite Bible ..... 298

§ 2. The Lollard editions of the Anglo-Norman Apocalypse,
Clement of Llanthony's Ununi ex Quattuor, and Rolle's
psalter ......... 302

§ 3. The southern epistles and prologue, probably inspired by

Wycliffe's influence ....... 304

§ 4. The north midland group of glosses and translations, the

earliest glosses " instigated " by WycUffe . . . 310

§5. Prose Sunday gospels with homilies. .... 315

XIV

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XIII

Bible reading by the orthodox, 1408-1526

PAGE

§ I. The possibility of a future general license of an English
biblical translation, hinted at in the synod of 1408, not
fulfilled 319

§ 2. Arundel's license and commendation, 1410, of a transla-
tion of the pseudo-Bonaventura's Life of Christ for
general reading by the faithful, a counter measure to the
translation of the gospels . . . . . .321

§ 3. Evidence that English Bible reading, though allowed to
nuns and the highest classes by individual license, was
regarded as forbidden in general to the laity . . . 326

§ 4. Fifteenth century schools, monks, and their attitude to

translations ........ 329

§ 5. English Bible reading by the orthodox; general statistics

of ownership by (a) lay people, [b) nunneries . . 333

§ 6. English devotional books as substitutes for Bible reading 342

§ 7. Manuals: absence of advice to use Bibles or translated

Bibles 343

§ 8. Episcopal injunctions, 1538. . . . . • 34^

CHAPTER XIV

The Lollards and English Bible reading

§ I. The Lollards from 1408-1526 ....

§ 2. The Lollards and English Bibles, from 1408 till the

prominence of Pecock .....

§ 3. Pecock and the mid fifteenth-century Lollards
§ 4. The Lollards from Pecock's trial, 1457, till the introduc

tion of Tindale's New Testament in 1526

§ 5. Conclusion .......

351

353
360

364
370

APPENDIX I

1. The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, 1395, and the
dating of the General Prologue to the Old Testament . . 374

2. The identity of John Purvey with the author of the
General Prologue to the Old Testament, and the second
Wyclif&te version ....... 37^

3. MS. evidence of the date of the later Wycliffite version 381

4. Reformation and post-Reformation writers on the history

of vernacular Bibles ....... 3^2

5. Quotations from Reformation and post-Reformation
writers on vernacular Bibles ..... 385

6. Analysis of book ownership from wiJls . . . 39^

CONTENTS

APPENDIX II: DOCUMENTS

1. William Butler's determination

2. Thomas Palmer's determination

3. John Purvey's determination

4. Wycliffe's [?] tract: The holi prophete Daiiid seith

5. Purvey's Epilogue to S. Matthew's Gospel

6. Purvey's Sixteen Points ....

PAGE

399
418

437
445
456
461

INDEX

469

CONTRACTIONS

ADB,

AM,

CE,

CHEL.

CPL,

CPR.

CVD.

CYS,
DH.
EB,
EDR,

EETS, ES,

EHR,

EV.

FM,

FZ,

HH,

HJ.
HZ,
LV,
MBVP,

MEN,
MLR,
NED.

PL,
RHT.
RS,
SH,

SS.

TE,

TV.

VCH,

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. Leipzig. 1875.

Acts and Monuments, Foxe, J. 1843; life by G. Townsend.

Catholic Encyclopedia. New York. 1907.

Cambridge History of English Literature.

Calendar of Papal Letters. Public Record Office.

Calendar of Papal Registers. Public Record Office.

Catalogi Veteres Lihrorum Ecclesiae Cathedralis Dunel-

mensis. Surtees Society. 1839.
Canterbury and York Society Publications.
Diocesan Histories. S.P.C.K.
Encyclopedia Britannica. Cambridge. 1910.
Ely Diocesan Remembrancer . (Extracts from episcopal

registers.)
Early English Text Society, Extra Series; EETS, OS,

Original Series.

English Historical Review.
Early version of Wycliffite Bible.

The Holy Bible : made from the Latin Vulgate by John

Wycliffe and his followers. Oxford. 1850.
Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis Wyclif cum

tritico. Shirley, W. W. 1858.
Herzog-Hauck. Realencyclopddie. Leipzig. 1903.
Historisches Jahrbuch.
Historische Zeitschrift.
Later version of Wycliffite Bible.
Magna Bibliotheca Vetenim Patrum. De la Bigne,

Cologne. 1618.
Modern Language Notes.
Modern Language Review.
New English Dictionary, ed. Murrav, J- A. H. Oxford.

1888.
Patrologia Latina. Migne. 1844.
Royal Historical Society Transactions.
Rolls Series, Chronicles and Memorials.
Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. New

York. 1908.
Surtees Society Publications.
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Testamenta Vetusta. Nicolas, N. H. London. 1826.
Vigouroux, F. Dictionnaire de la Bible. Paris. 1912,
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CONTRACTIONS xvu

Anec. Hist. Anecdotes Historiques, tirees du recueil inedit d'Etienne de

Bourbon. Lecoy de la Marche, A. Paris. 1877.
A rchaeol. A rchaeologia.

Ann. Trevir. Annates Trevirenses. Brower, C. Liege. 1670.
Barclay. The Ship of Fools, trans. Barclay, A. Edinburgh. 1874.
Berger. La Bible f ran false aumoyen age. Berger, S. Paris. 1884.
Bernard, Cat. Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiber-

niae. Bernard. 1697.
Bibliom. Bibliomania in the Middle Ages. Merryweather, F. S.

London. 1849.
Boekzaal. Boekzaal der Nederduytsche Bybels. Le Long, I. Amsterdam.

1732.
Book of Faith. Reginald Pecock's Book of Faith. Morison, J. Cam-
bridge. 1909.
Busch. Des Augustinerpropstes Johannis Busch Chronicon Windes-

hemense und Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum. Grube, K.

Halle. 1886.
Bury. The Abbey of S. Edmund at Bury. James, M. R. 1905.
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xviii CONTRACTIONS

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CONTRACTIONS xix

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La Tour-Landry. The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry. Wright,

T. EETS, OS, 33-
Lay Folks MB. Lay Folks Mass Book. Simmons, T. F. EETS, OS, 71.

1879.
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Line. Dioc. Docs. Lincoln Diocesan Documents. Clark, A. EETS,
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London Wills. Calendar of Wills proved and enrolled in the Court of
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Martene, Vet. Mon. Veterum Scriptorum et Monumentorum amplis-
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More, Dialogue. Workes of Sir Thomas More. London. 1557. A
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Parker Coll. Sources of Archbishop Parker's Collection of MSS.
James, M. R. 1899.

Paues, 1902. A Fourteenth Century English Biblical Version. Panes,
A. C. Cambridge. 1902.

Paues, 1904. Id. Cambridge. 1904.

XX CONTRACTIONS

Paul.Ep. Pauline Epistles. PoweU, M. J. EETS, ES, ii6.
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Pollard. Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse. Pollard, A. W. 1903.
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Rel. Antiq. Reliquiae Antiquae. Halliwell and Wright. London.

1841.
Repressor. The Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy. Ed.

Babington, C. 2 vols. RS, i860.

Research Ed. Some Results of Research in the History of Education in

England. Leach, A. F. 1914. Brit. Acad. Proc. vol. vi.
Reusch. Index der Verbotenen Bilcher. Reusch, H. Bonn. 1883.
Revius. Daventria Illustrata. Revius, J. Leyden. 1651.
Rom. Romania.

Sel. Eng. Works. Select English Works of John Wyclif. Arnold, T.
1869.

Som. Med. Lib. Somerset Mediaeval Libraries. Williams, T. W. Som.
Archaeol. Soc. 1897.

Stevens, Monast. Two additional volumes to the Monasticon Angli-
cawMW by Stevens, J. London. 1723.

Summers. Our Lollard Ancestors. Summers, W. H. London. 1904.
Syon. Catalogue of the Library of Syon Monastery. Bateson, M. Cam-
bridge. 1908.

Tepler Bibel. Die Tepler Bibeliibersetzung. Jostes, F. Miinster. 1886.

Test. Scots. New Test, in Scots. Law, T. G.

Trevelyan. England in the age of Wy cliff e. TreveWan, G. M. 1899.

Univs. Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. Rashdall, H. 1895.

Ussher. The Whole Works of the Most Reverend James Ussher. Elring-
ton, C. R. Dublin. 1847. 16 vols.: vol. xii. pp. 154 ff.: Historia
Dogmatica de Scripturis et Sacris Vernaculis.

Walden. Ursprung. Der Waldensische Ursprung des Codex Teplensis:
gegen die Angriffe von Dr F. Jostes verteidigt von Dr Hermann
Haupt. Wiirzburg. 1886.

Walther. Die Deutsche Bibeliibersetzung des Mittelalters. Walther, W.
Brunswick. 1889.

Wells. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400.

Wells, J. E. Yale Univ. Press. 1916.
Westminster. Manuscripts of Westminster Abbey. Robinson, A. and

James, M. R. 1908.

Wiegand. De Ecclesiae Notione quid Wiclif docuerit. Wiegand, F.
Leipzig. 1 89 1.

Wilkins. Concilia. Wilkins, D. 1738.

Witzel. De Fr. Rogero Bacon eiusque sententia de rebus Biblicis.
Witzel, P. T., O.F.M. Quaracchi. 1910.

CHAPTER I

The problem of the Middle-English Bible, and the
aim of this monograph.

§ I. When sir Thomas More wrote in his Dialogue'^ that he
himself had seen Enghsh Bibles, fair and old, in the houses of
his friends, and that such Bibles had been licensed for their use
by the bishops, he was unwittingly preparing the ground for a
later controversy: that of the origin and history of the trans-
lations long and justly known as the Wycliffite Bible. Several
points have been raised by his words: Were these translations
the work of Wycliffe and his immediate followers? Or were
they, as has been suggested, the authorised versions of orthodox
catholics, made before Wycliffe's time^? Was the reading of all
English Bibles viewed with suspicion and disapproval by the
Church, or did her disapproval extend only to translations
savouring of heresy? What, in short, is the history of Bible
reading by the laity in England, and what place do these trans-
lations known as the Wycliffite Bible take in it? The questions
are of more than antiquarian interest: they are part of the
history of vernacular translations of the Bible in Europe.

§ 2. This larger subject was most closely linked in the middle
ages with those of the liberty of private judgment, and the unity
of Christendom. The liberty of the individual to interpret Chris-
tianity afresh for himself, from the study of her original records,
and to interpret it, if he liked, in a manner different from that of
the united body of instructed opinion, had not yet been con-
ceded. This liberty to reinterpret Christianity, to form fresh
Christian bodies or sects, depended altogether on the right to
study the original records, and to make them accessible in trans-
lations to the unlettered masses whose conversion was wished.

^ Workes of Sir Thomas More, London, 1557, A Dialogue concernifig hme-
sies, a. 105-288. The Dialogue is a controversial work directed against
Tindale.

* The view put forward by cardinal Gasquet in The Old English Bible and
other Essays, London, 1897 ^^^ 1908; see appendix i, p. 3S2.

D. w. B. I

2 MIDDLE-ENGLISH BIBLE [CH.

It is scarcely doubtful that the unity of Christendom was pre-
served till the sixteenth century only by force. Had lay people
in the thirteenth century been allowed the right to read the
gospels for themselves, or exposed to the temptation to do so,
and had they generally been able to read, reinterpretation
would inevitably have followed, and Christendom would have
been divided in that century instead of the sixteenth^. It has
been maintained that it was the scarcity of books before the
invention of printing, and not the discouragement of the Church,
which actually prevented lay Bible reading, and its result, re-
interpretation ; but the history of such bodies as the Waldensians
makes this doubtful. The)' obviated the lack of books by
memorising the gospels; and, but for their suppression by the
inquisition, and their exclusion from all orthodox universities
and schools, they would have formed permanent bodies outside
the Church. The question of the unity of Christendom depended
on the possibility of the reinterpretation of Christianity, and
this depended on the accessibihty of the original Christian re-
cords to the masses. It was only to these books that a sectarian
teacher could appeal against the traditional teaching of the
Church. He might be able to read the Vulgate himself: his
hearers could not : therefore he prepared, and appealed to, trans-
lations in their mother tongue. It is thus true to say that the
history' of vernacular translations, and the attitude of the
Church towards them, is not a matter of merely antiquarian
interest, but the central strand in the history of the unity of
Christendom.

§ 3. The old fashioned tradition on the subject of the Wycliffite
Bible was that it was the work of Wychffe himself, and that the
ecclesiastical authorities forbade the use of all English trans-
lations before the Reformation. Modern study has modified this
view: but that which has most confused the issue has been the
opinion of sir Thomas More. More's Dialogue, the work in which
he discussed the subject of English Bibles, is still accessible only
in a sixteenth century edition ; but certain passages from it have
been largely quoted, though never the whole chapter dealing
with the subject. The first English edition of the New Testa-
ment, Tindale's, was printed at Cologne and Worms in 1525,

1 Cf. Univs. I. 71 n.

I] MORE AND TINDALE 3

and introduced into England in 1526: Tindale's controversial
works were being introduced at the same time. More, as the
councillor and chancellor of Henry VIII, wrote his Dialogue in
1528 to refute the new teaching on the subject of images,
prayer to the saints, "and many other things, by the t'one
begun in Saxony, and by the t'other laboured to be brought into
England^." The "many other things" included the subject of
biblical translations, and the withholding of the scriptures from
the laity, to which he devoted the sixteenth chapter of the third
book. He referred here to the provincial council of Oxford,
1408, wherein archbishop Arundel had forbidden the making of
a translation of the text of holy scripture, or the reading of any
such translation, made in the time of John Wycliffe, or since^.
In connexion with this, More touched upon the subject of

1 Sub-title of Dialogue, p, 105, Workes of Sir Thomas More, 1557.

2 Willdns, III. 317. " Ne quis texta S. Scripturae transferal in linguam
Anglicanam. Statuimus igitur atque ordinamus, ut nemo deinceps aliquem
textum sacrae scripturae auctoritate sua in linguam Anglicanam vel aliam
transferat, per viam libri, libelli aut tractatus, nee legatur aliquis huiusmodi
liber, libellus aut tractatus jam noviter tempore dicti Johannis Wycliffe,
sive citra compositus, sive in posterum componendus, in parte vel in toto,
publice vel occulta." Cardinal Gasquet's assertion that "aliquem textum"
"can only mean 'any passage' " (1897 ed. p. 169), is contrary to historical
evidence. The word textus is used very commonly

(i) for a liturgical gospel book, cf. the "textus of S. Dunstan," Som. Med.
Lib. 89; Britwold's textus, id. 49; one of 1122, id. 39; and those referred to
page 185, n. 3;

(2) less frequently for a particular biblical verse. Dialogue, in. " to lay and
confer one text with another"; Myroure, 71 ;

(3) frequently, as here, for the substance or version of a particular book:
the " texts " of the Vulgate at the date offered great variety, and a translator
might well be in doubt which to use as the basis of his version. The word
is used in this sense of the Lollard versions in Trevenant, Reg. 148, in a letter
of 1397 : " neque libros Anglicos secundum nudum textum de sacra scriptura
sinistre extractos"; by Lyndwood in his gloss on the passage: "Although it
be the plain text of sacred scripture that is so translated." Gundulph, bishop
of Rochester, wrote out " the text of the Vulgate," Bibliom. 60; Gerson com-
plained, c. 1415, of tho.se who thought "holy scripture should be believed in
its bare text without any interpretation " ; "appeal to the bare text of scrip-
ture," see pp. 104-6; Matthias of Janov, c. 1390, spoke of "the study of the
text of the most holy Bible," see p. 91 ; a Dutch gospel-harmonist, 1350-1400,
' ' I made one fair history out of the texts of the four gospels, " see p. 11 5 n. ; the
Oxford synod of 1408 forbade grammar masters to go beyond "explaining
the text grammatically," see p. 295. The prohibition of " aliquem textum s.
scripturae" simply made it clear to contemporaries that no one was to
translate the Bible, or its books, from any Latin or French version; the
translation of Bible stories in the narrator's own words was not, on the other
hand, covered by Arundel's prohibition.

4 MIDDLE-ENGLISH BIBLE [CH.

Wycliffe's Bible, and the attitude of the Church towards transla-
tions in his day : but we cannot properly estimate More's evidence
unless we realise that the matter with which he was vitally
concerned, and about which he was really well informed, was
Tindale's translation, and not Wycliffe's.

The character of the Messenger, More's interlocutor in the
Dialogue, is that of a promising young student, inclined towards
the ideas of the New Learning, and ready to agree with the
plausible arguments of the man in the street. He professes to
set forth the murmurings of reasonable men of small under-
standing, who are attracted by some of the new teaching, or, at
least, consider heretics are in some points hardly dealt with.
The value of the Messenger's arguments is that More himself
states them, as representing the attitude of many of the
orthodox and ignorant at the time of the burning of Tindale's
New Testament in 1526: and, as such, they agree with the
teaching and knowledge of such an orthodox teacher as Roger
Edgeworth^ in Mary's reign. The man in the street thinks the
Bible ought to be accessible in English: so do the Messenger,
Edgeworth, and, to some extent, More. The man in the
street knows of no existent manuscript English Bible except
W^^cliffe's : neither do the Messenger nor yet Edgeworth: but
the scholar and nobleman, More, has seen English Bibles in
the houses of the great, which, since they are orthodox,
cannot, he thinks, be Wycliffe's. The man in the street
believes that the clergy keep the scriptures from the laity: so
do Edgeworth and the Messenger: but sir Thomas More is
scholar enough to be able to quote the provincial council of
Oxford, and Lyndwood, in support of his contention that
they do not do so altogether.

The description of the Messenger's personal attitude to the
scriptures is interesting. Some men believe, he says, that
Tindale's New Testament was burnt at Paul's Cross, not be-

^ a. Eve of Reformation, GsLsquet, F. A., London, 1890, 245. Roger Edge-
worth knew of no existent orthodox English translation : "I have ever borne
in mind, that I thought it no harm, but rather good and profitable, that holy
scripture should be had in the mother tongue, and withheld from no man
that was apt and meet to take it in hand, specially if we could get it well
and truly translated, which will be very hard to be had." Sermons, London,
Caly, 1557, f. 31,

.*^-

I] MORE ON TRANSLATIONS 5

cause of the faults declared to be found in it, but to disguise the

fact that none such were found^ : ,

And that, for none other intent but for to keep out of the people's Jt/*-*^'
hands all knowledge of Christ's gospel, and of God's law, except so , -.*1/*''*^
much only as the clergy themselves list now and then to tell us. And
that, little as it is, and seldom shewed, yet as it is feared, not well
and truly told, but watered with false glosses, and altered from the
truth of the very words and sentence of scripture, only for the main-
tenance of their authority. And for the fear lest this thing should
evidently appear to the people, if they were suffered to read the
scripture themselves in their own tongue, was, (as it is thought) , the
very cause, not only for which the New Testament translated by
Tindale was burned, but also that the clerg^^ of this realm hath
before this time by a constitution provincial prohibited any book
of scripture to be translated into the English tongue, fearing men
with fire as heretics who should so presume to keep them, as though
it were heresy for a Christian man to read Christ's gospel. And
surely sir, quoth he, some folk that think this dealing of the clergy
to be thus, and good men to be mishandled for declaring the truth,
and the scripture' self to be pulled out of the people's hands^.lest they
should perceive the truth, be led in their minds to doubt whether
Luther himself, (of whose opinions, or at the least of whose works,
all this business began), wrote indeed so evil as he is borne in hand.

After this prologue, More devotes three chapters to the in-
struction of the Messenger on the subject of biblical translations,
the first to explaining the enactment of the council of Oxford in
1408, the others to shewing that the laitj^ might use such trans-
lations under certain restrictions^. There was no constitution,
said More, which positively forbade the people to have any
scripture translated into our tongue:

For ye shall understand that the great arch heretic, Wycliffe,
whereas the whole Bible was long before his days by virtuous and
well learned men translated into the Enghsh tongue, and by good
and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently
read, took upon of a malicious purpose to translate it of new*. In

1 More, Dialogue, 109.

2 Erasmus supported this view of the Messenger, see pp. 384-7, and it is
justified also by the wording of the episcopal injunctions of 1538, see
pp. 348-9.

» Dialogue. Ub. iii. cc. 11, 14, 15, 16; pp. 224-6, 233-47.

* This sentence, with the words " long before his day," is quite consistent
with a reference to the Anglo-Saxon gospels, etc., which had become so out-
worn in language, that Wycliffe, " translated it of new." The next sentence
is typical of More's description of Wycliffe's text, as he imagined it, from the
analogy of Tindale's.

6 MIDDLE-ENGLISH BIBLE [CH.

which translation he purposely corrupted the holy text, maliciously
planting therein such words, as might in the readers' ears serve to the
proof of such heresies as he went about to sow : which he not only set
forth with his own translation of the Bible, but also with certain pro-
logues and glosses which he made thereon.... After that it was per-
ceived what harm the people took by the translation, prologues and
glosses of Wycliffe's, and also of some other, that after him holp to set
forth his sect: then for that cause, and forasmuch as it is dangerous
to translate the text of scripture out of one tongue into another i, as
holy S. Jerome testifieth, forasmuch as in translation it is hard alway
to keep the same sentence whole: it was, I say, for these causes at a
council holden at Oxford, provided upon great pain, that no man
should from thenceforth translate into the English tongue, or any
other language, of his own authority, by way of book, libel, or treatise :
nor no man openly or secretly any such book, libel or treatise read,
newly made in the time of the said John Wycliffe: or that should be
made any time after, till the said translation were by the diocesan,
or if need should require, by a provincial council approved.... For I
trow that in this law ye see nothing unreasonable. For it neither
forbiddeth the translations to be read that were already well done of
old before Wycliffe's days, nor damneth his because it was new, but
because it was naught : nor prohibiteth new to be made, but provideth
that they shall not be read if they be mismade, till they be by good
examination amended, except they be such translations as Wycliffe
made and Tindale, that the malicious mind of the translator had in
such wise handled, it were as it were labour lost to go about to mend
them.

To this the Messenger replies :

" I long by my troth," quoth he, " and even sit on thorns, till I see
that constitution. For not myself only, but every man else hath ever
taken it for otherwise.... I suppose," quoth he, "that this opinion is
rather grown another way, that is to wit, that the clergy, though the
law serve them not therefore, do yet in deed take all translations out
of every lay man's hand. And sometime, with those that be burned
or convicted of heresy, they burn the English Bible without respect,
be the translation old or new, bad or good."

" Forsooth," quoth I, " if this were so, then were it, in my mind, not
well done. But I believe ye mistake it. Howbeit, what ye have seen
I cannot say; but myself have seen, and can shew you, Bibles fair
and old written in English, which have been known and seen by
the bishop of the diocese 2, and left in laymen's hands, and

^ From this point. More is quoting from the constitutions of Oxford, 1408.

" More had no doubt seen English biblical translations in noblemen's
libraries, or perhaps those of nunneries. He was closely in touch with the
London Carthusians, for between 1499 and 1503 he had attended their daily
of&ces and shared their ascetic practices, while undecided as to his vocation:

I] MORE AND LICENSES 7

women's^, tofsuch as he knew for good and catholic folk. But of
truth, all such as are found in the hands of heretics, they use to take
away 2."

In the next chapter, More explains that translations were
allowed from the earliest days of the Church, and that he for
his part would favour their being allowed now, under proper
supervision.

he had probably seen the English Bible of the Sheen Charterhouse (a later
version, without heretical prologues or glosses, see FM i. xlvii). He was also
the special friend of at least one Brigittine monk of Sion, Richard Whitford,
and Sion was presented in 1517 with an early version of the Wycliffite Bible,
also perfectly orthodox. Whether More inferred from the constitutions of
1408 that the Bibles he had seen had been licensed by the bishop for indivi-
dual use, or whether he actually knew this to have been the case, is doubtful :
episcopal licenses may have been verbal : and no English written ones have
survived. (For remains of a note that an English Bible had been "overseen
and read" for a woman by two doctors, see p. 336.) The earliest surviving
written license to use a vernacular Bible of which I am aware (apart from
that in the Myroure, see p. 339), is that of the Spanish archbishop and in-
quisitor general Tavera to the duchess of Soma, c. 1539, allowing her to use
an Italian Bible for a year only; printed Span. Inq. in. 575.

^ Dial. 233-4. Eor More's next account of the burning of Richard Hun's
Bible, not because it was in English, but because it contained a prologue
of great and manifest heresy, see p. 14, n. 3. Cardinal Gasquet's assertion
(1897 ed. p. 129) that "in the edition of Wycliffite scriptures published by
Forshall and Madden we shall look in vain for any trace of these errors,"
has been shewn to be unfounded by the reviewer in the Church Quarterly
Revieiv, Jan. 1901, pp. 265-298, and a very slight examination of the General
Prologue to the O. Test, confirms this. Cardinal Gasquet notices {id. 117)
that " there is no room for doubting " that this prologue and the translation
are the work of the same hand.

^ That the licensed reading of English Bibles could not have been general,
even among the upper classes, is indicated by Cranmer, in his preface to
the second (1540, Richard Grafton) edition of the Great Bible. Though
anxious to commend the book, and to shew that the reading of English
Bibles was not unlawful, he does not mention any custom of English Bible
reading for the last hundred years, but divides English thinkers on the
question into: those who opposed it and those who misused it. It would have
been natural for him to mention that some few pious folk had used the
English Bible profitably within the last hundred years, had they been
numerous, for he was in want of precedents. He wrote that the English
Bible "may be both the better accepted of them which hitherto could not
well bear it, and also the better used of them which heretofore have misused
it. . . . In the former sort be all they that refuse to read, or to hear read, the
scripture in the vulgar tongues: much worse, they also let or discourage the
other from the reading or hearing thereof. Such is the nature of custom . . .
and therefore I can well think them worthy pardon, which at the coming
abroad of scripture doubted and drew back. . . .And yet if the matter should
be tried by custom, we might also allege custom for the reading of scripture
in the vulgar tongue, and prescribe the more ancient custom. For it is not
much above one hundred years ago," etc. (See continuation, p. 12, n.)

8 MIDDLE-ENGLISH BIBLE [CH.

Methinketh that the constitution provincial of which we spake
right now, hath determined this question already. For when the
clergy therein agreed that the English Bibles should remain, which
were translated afore Wycliffe's days, they consequently did agree
that to have the Bible in English was no hurt.

These passages have been quoted to shew More's view on the
subject of pre-Wycliffite versions, and the existence of English
Bibles in his own day by the license of the bishop. But he does
not deny that men commonly took the constitution of 1408 as
prohibiting the use of translations in general, and that, though
he himself has seen English Bibles, they are nevertheless not
common.

" Sir," quoth the Messenger, " yet for all this I can see no cause why
the clergy should keep the Bible out of laymen's hands, that can no
more but their mother tongue."

" I had weened," quoth I, " that I had shewed you plainly, that they
keep it not from them.,.."

" Ye say well," quoth he, " but yet, as women say, somewhat it was
alway that the cat winked when her eye was out. Surely it is not for
nought that the English Bible is in so few^ men's hands, when so many
would so fain have it^."

More agrees that this is true; but the authorities fear that it
is chiefly the heretics who wish to have it. Yet it strikes him as
curious that, though the constitutions of 1408 did not forbid
the making of translations, no catholic scholar had ever ventured
to make one.

"And surely how it hath happed, that in all this while God hath
either not suffered, or not provided, that any good virtuous man hath
had the mind in faithful wise to translate it, and thereupon either the
clergy, or at the least wise, some one bishop to approve it : this can I
nothing tell."

" I am sure," quoth the Messenger, " ye doubt not but that I am full

^ Dial. 2^1. Cf. Erasmus' assertion, p. 387, that many theologians even in
Germany, where opinion was far more liberal towards vernacular Bibles
than in England, denied the right of the laity to read the Bible. Erasmus
recommends that lay people should be warned to use it with reverence and
humility: "but as to those people who simply banish the divine books from
the hands of lay people, I know not by what spirit they are led. Their
decision is contrary to the example of Christ and the Apostles. The greatest
doctors of the Church advise that course from which they would deter us :
and reckon that most praiseworthy which they execrate as impious."
Opera, 1706, v. 729.

I] more's evidence criticised 9

and whole of your mind in this matter, that the Bible should be in our
English tongue. But yet that the clergy is of the contrary, and would
not have it so, that appeareth well, in that they suffer it not to be so^. "

Enough has perhaps been quoted to shew that sir Thomas
More gives, in his Dialogue, evidence of two kinds, both equally
valuable. In the first place, he states the belief of his unen-
lightened contemporaries : in the second, he gives his own expert
opinion. In the first place, the Messenger's views are his own
picture of the belief of a young and intelligent lay scholar of his
day, — certainly not those of a man who counted himself a
Lutheran; he represents the "man in the street" in that he has
not, like More, inquired into the authority of his belief about the
prohibition of translations, but simply shares it with the mass of
his contemporaries. More states then that, rightly or wrongly,
it was about 1528 generally believed that the council of Oxford
had forbidden the making or using of translations of the Bible,
and that the clergy would not suffer such translations to be in
lay people's hands.

Secondly, More gives his own views on the desirability and
history of English translations, — those of a devout and in-
structed catholic, an eminent lawyer defending his case, and a
fervent admirer of the New Learning. They are the views of the
friend of Erasmus^, of one of the most liberal and brilHant
scholars of the day: and it would be rash to assume that they
coincided at all points with those of the representative politician
or bishop of the time, let alone the representative parish priest.
More's personal evidence can, now, be analysed from these three
points of view, for which it has very differing values. It is that
of a lawyer who has looked up his authorities: of a most liberal
but strictly orthodox scholar: and of a historian. The three
questions, what is the value of More's statements as a lawyer,
as a Uberal cathoHc, and as a historian, must be answered
separately, or much confusion will arise.

As to law, More was undoubtedly right. The only authorities
he studied were the constitutions of Oxford, and Lyndwood's
comments thereon: but his conclusion was sound. He did not
quote the Decretals of Gregory IX on the subject of biblical

^ Id. 241. - See p. II.

10 MIDDLE-ENGLISH BIBLE [CH.

translations^, as he might perhaps have been expected to do: but
thought it sufficient to quote rightly the Enghsh constitution which
was the subject of such general misunderstanding and comment.
His views as a devout catholic and humanist scholar are also
valuable: but they are, in all probability, more liberal than those
of the average churchman of his day; and they were much less
liberal than they are sometimes represented. To a scholar like
More, imbued with the Renaissance reverence for original
authorities and first principles, it was impossible to overlook the
practice of the Church of the first nine centuries with regard to
biblical translations. The gospels were written in the vulgar
tongue: S. Jerome had translated them into the vulgar tongue
of his da}': therefore to More it was just as desirable now that

^ For the letter of Innocent III to the archbishop of Metz, partly em-
bodied therein, see pp. 31-2. The original letter was distinctly hostile to trans-
lations, and interpreted in that sense by the pope's legates: but the portion
in the Decretal, Cum ex injuncto, dealt mainly with conventicles and lay
preaching, and as such received the attention of commentators. The Cum
ex injuncto and the commentators' glosses were well known to inquisitors,
but they interpreted "lay preaching" as including the recitation of verna-
cular translations of the Bible, and the possession of such translations as
giving rise to lay preaching. (For the commentators, and Eymeric's
Directorium Inquisitorum see p. 34.) The Dutch lawyers of Cologne, 1398,
were the first to argue that the Cum ex injuncto was in reality favourable
to translations of the simpler parts of the Bible. I have not found any
manual for inquisitors mentioning the whole letter to Metz, as distinguished
from the Cum ex injuncto (Pegna, the 1607 editor of the Direct. Inq. mentions
it, p. 100), but the inquisitors had no need to do so, for they were usually
granted all the powers granted to the inquisition at Toulouse, 1229, which
included that of suppressing translations. More may have considered the
Cum ex injuncto not to the point, and either been unaware of the hostile
decisions of provincial councils, or disregarded them. Erasmus who sup-
ported the popularisation of the scriptures much more ardently than More,
had evidently had some "canonical" prohibition objected to him by his
opponents, probably this letter of Innocent III. He replied to the monk
who denied the lawfulness of biblical translations: "Moreover, if any con-
stitution of our forefathers that the common people ought not to have
the sacred books, was issued, that ought to be adjudged a remedy given for
reasons of time and place. For my part, this is not clear to me: and yet
nevertheless, it may have occurred that such a constitution was issued,
directed against the arrogance of certain unlettered people. It is certainly
clear that it has not been confirmed by public custom. For of late the com-
mon people have the sacred books translated into the vulgar tongue, and
read them openly" [Erasmi Opera, Leyden, 1706, ix. 785). Erasmus wrote
ten years after the publication of Luther's N. Test., and even before that
time vernacular gospel books, etc. had been more plentiful in Germany than
elsewhere in Europe. More was most closely in touch with Erasmus before
the subject of vernacular Bibles had become a burning question.

I] MORE AND ERASMUS II

the devout should be able to read in their mother tongue such
portions of the Bible as their simplicity could comprehend. The
scheme by which he proposed to accomplish this end can be
examined later in his Dialogue ; though it was that of one of
the most Hberal churchmen of his day, its limits were very
narrow. More did not propose that, in practice, more than the
devout of the upper classes should have English Bibles. Could
not the bishop, he said, give an EngHsh Bible, or such part of it
as he might see lit, to those of the faithful in his diocese whom he
personally knew to be fit to profit by it? The books should be
returned at death to the bishop, who would thus have a personal
knowledge of those who used them. In practice, this scheme
could hardly have been democratic.

More had been the friend of Erasmus since 1498, and cannot
fail to have been influenced by his views as to the desirabiUty
of popularising knowledge of the scriptures: and yet their
attitude to the question is widely different. More wished for a
regularisation of the old scheme of a diocesan license for each
reader of an English Bible, though he wished the bishop to
present the Bible at his own expense^ to the reader during his
Hfe-time. The desire of Erasmus was for the accessibility of the
scriptures to all, and in the references to the subject among his
different works, there is no question of an episcopal license, or
even that of the confessor, though " they do well who warn the
common people that they should make use of the sacred volumes
with religious fear, and not trust rashly to their own judgment 2."
More wrote his Dialogue in 1528: and in 1529 a translation of a
work of Erasmus called the Exhortation to the diligent study of
scripture was brought into England, where the wishes expressed
for the general knowledge of the Bible were different from More's.

I would to God that the ploughman would sing a text of the scripture
at his plough-beam ; and that the weaver at his loom with this would
drive away the tediousness of time. I would the wayfaring man with
this pastime would expel the weariness of his journey. And to be short,
I would that all the communication of the Christian should be of the
scripture ; for in a manner, such are we ourselves, asour daily tales are^.

1 Dial. 245. " Erasmi Opera, 1706, Leyden, v. 729.

3 For the continuation of this and other extracts from Erasmus' works in
defence of translations, and for the 1527 condemnation of them at Paris, see
appendix, pp. 384-7.

12 MIDDLE-ENGLISH BIBLE [CH.

The very year before More published his Dialogue, the
theological faculty at Paris had condemned a catena of the
propositions of Erasmus, where he defended the general use of
biblical translations, and the views of More in the Dialogue are
much more in accordance with the censure, than with Erasmus'
propositions. More wished to perpetuate the mediaeval system
of infrequent and licensed Bible reading by the upper classes:
Erasmus wished, like the Waldensians and the Lollards, that
men of all classes, husbandmen, smiths, weavers, plough boys,
and even women, should be free to find in vernacular Bibles " the
quick and living image of His most holy mind, yea, and Christ
Himself, healing, dying, rising again."

More's authority as a historian is less than his authority as a
lawyer, and much less than his authority as a saint, with which
it is sometimes confused. He had only the linguistic and his-
torical equipment of his contemporaries: much too little lin-
guistic or historical knowledge to be able to assign an old English
manuscript to a particular century. His only authority for his
statements about the Wycliffite Bible is, quite clearly, the con-
stitutions of 1408: he adds to that his own inferences therefrom,
and a perfectly natural, but inaccurate guess, that the text of
the actual Wycliffite Bible rnust have been heretical. It is quite
easy to reconstruct the process by which More arrived at his
conclusions about old English Bibles. It was patent to him, to
start with, that there was nothing wrong in biblical translations
themselves^, since, for instance, that of S. Jerome was in uni-
versal use. He found next that the constitutions of Oxford did
not forbid translations as such, but mentioned the existence of
pre-Wycliffite ones^. More had no historical knowledge to tell

^ This was far from being patent to many mediaeval minds: as for
instance to the two very learned Dominican and Franciscan friars who con-
tended for the opposite view in Henry IV's reign; see pp. 401-37; 297 n.

2 The following criticism of More's belief applies also to Cranmer's, who
said in the preface to the 1540 edition of the EngUsh Bible (see p. 7, n. 2),
" It is not much above one hundred years ago since Scripture hath not been
accustomed to be read in the vulgar tongue within this realm, and many
hundred years before that it was translated and read in the Saxon tongue,
which at that time was our mother's tongue: whereof there remaineth yet
divers copies found lately in old abbeys, of such antique manners of writing
and speaking that few men now been able to read and understand them.
And when this language waxed old and out of common use, because folk

I] MORE AND MSS. 13

him that those responsible for the constitutions had in mind, in
all probability, Bede's translation of S. John's gospel, with
which they were acquainted through Higden; or principally,
existence of unreadable manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon gospels ; or
finally, that already fairly widely known book, Richard Rolle's
English psalter^. There were actually in existence in 1408 a few
solitary manuscripts of partial translations of the New Testa-
ment made in Wycliffe's day, and quite possibly by orthodox
catholics: but it would be very rash, and contrary to probability,
to assume that those who drew up the constitutions of 1408 had
a modern specialist's knowledge of these sparse manuscripts^:
or that they knew even vaguely that contemporary translations
existed which were not due to the Wyclifhte school. Had they
known of them, they would most certainly have required their
submission for episcopal approbation, as they did of any future
translations. But it was perfectly natural for More (who had no
means of knowing what early fourteenth century translations
actually existed), to think that English translations did exist in

should not lack the fruit of reading, it was again translated in the newer
language. Whereof yet many copies remain and be daily found." Cranmer's
authority here was almost certainly, like More's, the constitution of 1408.
Gairdner, Loll. i. 104, emphasises the point that " Cranmer does not even hint
that the newer translations were due to Wycliffe." Cranmer was no more
likely than sir Thomas More to know to whom the translations were due:
had he suspected them to be due to any particular orthodox translator,
he would certainly have said so, for his preface aimed at proving the law-
fulness of the use of vernacular scriptures. If he had any suspicion that the
Enghsh fifteenth century versions were connected with Wycliffe, he would
certainly not have mentioned the suspicion in such a preface: but there is no
need to suppose that he had. It is noticeable, however, in this connexion,
that sixteenth century apologists who were anxious to give all the examples
of earlier translations by orthodox writers, or those used by the orthodox,
never quote anything later than Hampole's psalter (written before i349.
popular by c. 1370). J. Foxe wished to give a historical example of an early
translation : but what he chose to print was The Gospels of the fower Evange-
listes, translated in the oldc Saxons' time out of Latin into the vulgar toung of the
Saxons, London, 1571.

1 Ed. Bramley, H. R., Oxford, 1884.

2 For partial bibhcal translations contemporary with the Wyclif&te
versions, see chapter xii, p. 299. There are two main points to notice about
such translations : first, they are not clearly earlier than the Wychffite, but
broadly speaking, contemporary. Secondly, they were unknown, com-
pared to the Wycliffite versions: one or two MSS. only survive of each, as
against the 170 MSS. of the Wychffite versions mentioned by Forshall and
Madden {The Holy Bible : made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and
his Followers, Oxford, 1850), in addition to which others are now known.

14 MIDDLE-ENGLISH BIBLE [CH.

the age preceding Wycliffe : and perfectly natural for him to draw
the inference that the English Bibles he had himself seen were
the descendants of such orthodox versions. These Bibles were
in the hands of the orthodox, and were therefore, he argued,
free from heresy. Since Wycliffe's Bible had been condemned,
doubtless it was because its text, like Tindale's, was heretical:
it could not therefore have been the parent of the Bibles he had
seen: the originals of these must have been the pre-Wycliffite
translations implied in the constitutions of 1408. This seemed
certain to him, because, curious as the fact might be, no trans-
lations had been approved by the bishops since^; and he could
not conceive the possibility of an episcopal license to read a
Wycliffite version.

The preoccupation of his mind with Tindale's New Testament
explains this unquestioning assumption. He had, earlier in the
Dialogue, commented on Tindale's controversial translations of
parts of the scriptures^. More certainly stated that the heresy in
the only Wycliffite Bible he had himself examined, Richard
Hun's Bible, was in the prologue ^ : and that the Wychfhtes wrote
heretical prologues and glosses* to their text: but it did not
strike him that there might have been perhaps nothing to quarrel

^ See p. 319.

2 "For first he would make the people believe that we should believe no-
thing but plain scripture, in which point he teacheth a plain pestilent heresy.
And then would he with his false translation make the people ween further
that such articles of our faith as he laboureth to destroy, and which be well
proved by holy scripture, were in holy scripture nothing spoken of, but that
the preachers have all this fifteen hundred year misreported the gospel,
and Englished the scripture wrong, to lead the people purposely out of the
right way." Dialogue, 223.

* More was present at the examination of Richard Hun in the Tower in
1514. He says in the Dialogue, 240, "For surely at such time as he was
denounced for an heretic, there lay his English Bible open, and some other
English books of his, that every man might see the places noted with his
own hand, such words and in such wise, that there would no wise man,
that good were, have any doubt after the sight thereof, what naughty minds
the men had, both he that so noted them, and he that so made them. I
remember not now the specialities of the matter, nor the formal words as they
were written. But this I remember well, that besides other things framed
for the favour of divers other heresies, there were in the prologue of that
Bible, such words touching the blessed sacrament as good Christian men
did much abhor to hear, and which gave the readers undoubted occasion
to think that the book was written after Wycliffe's copy, and by him trans-
lated into our tongue." For Richard Hun, see pp. 369-70.

* See pp. 259-66.

l] FOREIGN PARALLELS 15

with in the Wydiffite translation of the text itself^. His assump-
tion that the text itself was heretical was a quite unconscious
assumption, based on the analogy of Tindale's New Testament.
He would have been surprised to learn that the English Bibles
he had seen in his friends' houses were merely the Wycliffite
text, with the prologue omitted: but could he have known that
orthodox catholic historians have now identified the translations
used in some Italian nunneries in his own day as descendants of
Waldensian originals-, and that many philological speciahsts
beheve the same phenomenon to have occurred in Germany 3,
he need not have been surprised. To expect from Sir Thomas
More, however, accurate historical or linguistic knowledge of the
relation of the manuscripts he had seen to the Wycliffite Bible
would be to expect an anachronism. His view as to the legal
aspect of the matter was right : his scheme for the distribution
of Bibles is most interesting evidence as to what the best mind
of that day wished in the matter: his evidence as to contem-
porary belief in the absolute prohibition of all translations is
valuable: but his theory as to the origin of such English Bibles
as he had seen, though natural, was wrong. There is almost
historical certainty that, though found in the houses of the
faithful, they were the Wycliffite texts, and that there was no
important biblical translation, whole or partial, made in the
fourteenth century before the days of Wychffe's influence.

1 No contemporary of Wycliffe accused the Lollards of mistranslating the
text of the Bible: Walden's reference to Wycliffe, Doct. jii. 12, as a "falsifier
of scripture," is, as the context shews, only an attack on certain Wycliffite
theories based on an interpretation of certain biblical verses. In 1397 the
Lollards were blamed in a royal letter for translating the "bare text" of
holy scripture, not for mistranslating it, see p. 288, In a contemporary
anti-Lollard poem quoted Lanterne, EETS, OS, 151, 143, the Lollards are
vaguely accused of misinterpretation:

Ther the Bibelle is al myswent.

To jangle of Job or Jeremie,

That constreuen hit after her entent

For lewde lust of Lollardie.
But the editor can find only Lollard glosses, not inserted as part of the
translated text, in support of the accusation, see id. 143. For the absence of
accusation of partizan translation by opponents of earlier Waldensian
French or German translations, see pp. 30-1 ; for modern acknowledgment
of their literal accuracy, S. Minocchi in V, Italiennes [Versions], p. 1022.

2 See Italiennes [Versions] de la Bible, V, iii. 1020; and cf. chapter 11,
p. 44.

3 See pp. 64-8.

l6 MIDDLE-ENGLISH BIBLE [CH.

§ 4. More's evidence has been here criticised at length, be-
cause without it some modern theories as to the nature and
number of old English translations, and the attitude of the
Church towards them, could scarcely have been put forward.
The present explanation of his evidence is here suggested as a
theory, which it is hoped to prove in the following chapters.
No effort seems to have been made as yet to put the study of
Enghsh bibhcal translations into its proper European back-
ground, although the comparison of the efforts of English
Lollards to spread vernacular scriptures with those of the
continental Lollards, and the Brethren of the Common Life, at
the same date, is most illuminating. A vivid light is thrown on
the history of translations in England by continental prohibitions
of translations, the efforts of thirteenth and fourteenth century
inquisitors to suppress them, and their defence by more liberal
minded catholics. England was under the same canon law as the
continent : and the precedent of earlier provincial constitutions
apphed to us as much as to other European countries. The
thirteenth century inquisition was never introduced into
England to suppress Lollardy : but the old inquisition of heretical
pravity had existed long before that century, under episcopal
and papal direction, and it existed alongside with it. The
episcopal inquisition used in England against the Lollards
differed little in authority and method from that inquisition,
which was carrying on so vigorous a campaign against the
Lollards or Beghards of the low countries at the time of Wycliffe's
death: Foxe's Acts and Monuments is a record very similar to
that of the inquisitor of Toulouse. Again, the attitude of the
orthodox in Germany towards bibhcal translations in the
fifteenth century throws much light on the attitude of the
orthodox in England.

The Enghsh sources for the history of Enghsh biblical trans-
lations, and the attitude of the Church towards them include six
groups.yrhere is the evidence of contemporaries as to the making
of any translation, or their lack of knowledge of particular
translations, shewn by their omission in any list of such which
they give. There are the existent manuscripts of Enghsh Bibles,
which afford evidence as to different translations, and indications
as to their possession by clerks or laymen, men or women,

I] SOURCES 17

heterodox or orthodox. /There are contemporary wills, large
numbers of which already exist in printed collections : numbers
sufficiently large to give a fairly secure index of the relatively
frequent ownership of Latin, French, and EngHsh Bibles and
devotional books (for these last are interesting for comparison's
sake). /There are very many contemporary catalogues of the
libraries of individuals, colleges, monasteries, etc., in which one
would expect to find mention of English Bibles if they had
existed in any considerable number. /Episcopal registers also
afford evidence on the subject, in the shape of occasional wills,
and the records of heresy trials, which throw Hght on the con-
nexion between possession of an English Bible and heresy.
/Finally, the enactments of diocesan and provincial synods afford
light on the educational level reached by the clergy, and help to
decide the question whether the Sunday gospel was ever directly
translated at mass.

D W B.

CHAPTER II

The prohibition of vernacular Bible reading in
France, Italy and Spain

§ I. The attitude of the mediaeval Church towards trans-
lations of the Bible is not easy to define : both because it under-
went considerable modification between the tenth and the
sixteenth centuries, and because it was always connected in
practice with the right of the lait\^ to inquire into high and
divine matters^, and to preach without episcopal license 2. As
a result of this connexion, the attitude of the Church to biblical
translations was determined by the status of the translator and
the purpose of the translation : if this translation were made for
some king or exalted personage, or by some solitary student,
and remained a hallowed but practically unused volume in a
royal or monastic library, no objection was taken to the trans-
lation as such: but if the translation was used to popularise a
knowledge of the biblical text among lay people, prohibition
immediately followed. This was certainly the case till the end
of the fourteenth century t?iroughout Europe, and it was a course
that found a majority of advocates in most European countries
down to the Reformation, and many orthodox champions later.
•From the end of the fourteenth century lay people of the upper
iclasses could usually obtain license from their confessors to use
translations of parts of the Bible, as they could obtain other

1 It was for this reason that Maerlant states that he incurred the enmity
of the clergy for his translation of the Historia Scholastica into Dutch verse.
See p. 72. For the explicit statement of this point of view, see the letters of
Gregory VII and Innocent III, pp. 24, 31.

" In the case of the Wafdensians, see for instance the indictment of their
unauthorised preaching in Alanus de Insula's De Fide Catholica contra
hereticos, lib. 11. c. 377, in PL 210, c. 305-400. The Waldensians presume
to preach, he says, though they are laymen and illiterate, while even learned
Cistercian monks do not preach, because they are not licensed and sent
thereto by the bishop. At the disputation at Xarbonne, again, held in 1190
between the orthodox and the Waldensians, the discussion turned on the
right of the Waldensians to expound, not to read, translations of the scrip-
tures. Inq. I. 78. See also pp. 31—3; and for the repression of preaching
without episcopal hcense in England, pp. 283, 295..

CH.II] EARLY TRANSLATIONS 19

' minor dispensations; but, broadly speaking, those who desired
to obtain such dispensations were few, since Bible reading was
not recommended as an ordinary pious practice for the laity, till
quite the close of the middle ages. Till that period, the broad
distinction remains, that the Church took no notice of the
making of biblical translations as such, but forbade all attempts
at their popularisation, and this from quite worthy motives and
deliberate judgment as to the inexpediency of such a course.

In nearly all European countries, parts of the Bible were
translated into verse or prose, almost from the time of the
barbarian invasions : indeed, in the case of Ulphilas's translation
of the gospels, from a time prior to the migration of the Goths.
In most cases the psalter, the foundation of the divine office, was
translated early, and the translation of parts of the New Testa-
ment almost alwa37s preceded parts of the Old. After Peter
Comestor, canon of Troyes, had about 1150 compiled his Historia
Scholastica^, translations of this work were more frequent, and
more copied, than translations of portions of the Bible itself^.
This was largely through the very great popularity of the Historia
Scholastica in its Latin form, and no doubt also because such a
work was considered safer than the literal translation of the
sacred text. But these cases of translations, loose or literal,
glossed or unglossed, of single biblical books or of the Historia
Scholastica, remained merely hterary curiosities ^i they were not,

^ See p. 177. A summary in Latin of the historical books of the Old
and New Testaments, together with historical information from secular

writers.

2 Manuscripts of the French Bible historianlx are more frequent than
translations of the Bible itself : this was a free translation made by Guyart
Desmoulins, canon of Aire in Artois, c. 1 291-4. Maerlant translated it into
Dutch, c. 1 271.

* For accounts of the different vernacular versions, see the articles on
Frangaises [Versions\, Vaudoises, Allemandes, Italiennes, Danoises, Suidoi-
ses et Scandinaves, Espagnoles, in V with the bibliographies; also the corre-
sponding articles in HH, CE, and SC. See also in Dominicains : [travaux
des) sur les saintes ecriiiires, and the corresponding articles on Franciscains,
Chartreux, etc. In the learned article, Dominicains : {travaux des) etc., P.
Mandonnet brings out clearly that the friars, as missionaries, were sometimes
torn between the needs of the souls they shepherded, and the official con-
- demnation of vernacular Bibles. "Torn between the very real need of
coming to the aid of the faithful, and the prohibition of the hierarchy,
the Dominicans hesitated a little, but gave way here and there to the first
consideration... .This kind of uncertainty must explain, we beheve, to a
large extent, why so few translators' names remain attached to their works,

2 — 2

20 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

for instance, among the books normally studied in monastic
libraries, — a class which can be defined with very great certainty
from the numerous monastic catalogues which have come down
to us^. Translations for royal personages were made at some
period in nearly all European countries ; in France, the Domini-
cans prepared a translation of the greater part of the Old Testa-
ment for king John the Good, about 1355^, and Raoul de Presles
revised for Charles V the old thirteenth century French Bible
prepared by the stationers, or booksellers, of the university of
Paris. This was just at the time when the Wyclifftte versions
were appearing in England. The same text was used in preparing
a translation of the Sunday epistles and gospels for queen
Jeanne of Burgundy, wife of Philip VL In Norway Hakon V
ordered the translation of the historical books of the Bible early
in the fourteenth century; in Bohemia, a beautifully illustrated
German Bible was prepared for the emperor Wenzel, between
1389 and 1400, while his daughter Anne possessed the gospels in
Latin, German and Slavonic, and the princess Marguerite,
daughter of Charles IV, who married Louis, king of Hungary
and Poland, had a psalter in Latin, Polish and German.

Copies of these or similar translations were sometimes
possessed by princes, nobles, and the owners of large collections
of manuscripts, but the translations had no influence on the
instruction of the secular clergy, the great body of regulars, or
of the laity. The lower and middle classes could not, of course,

especially in the realm of translations of scripture, the authors being liable
to trouble on account of their hterary paternity. . . . Nevertheless, there is
no religious order which has not to its account, in the middle ages, a fairly
large number of bibhcal translations." In the detailed account of the works
of the Dominicans in the different countries, P. Mandonnet, however, some-
times overrates the Dominicans' share in issuing or encouraging transla-
tions : his chief claim, that the Dominicans prepared the thirteenth century
Paris Bible is explicitly traversed by Mangenot in the article on Frangaises
[ Versions] in V ; for his inference from the prohibition of the chapter general
in 1242 see p. 37; and note also that his citations of Dominican translators
come in most cases from the late middle ages, after the invention of printing.
For his estimate of the work of Dominicans in Germany, and the prevalence
of translations in German convents, he has been misled by too much reliance
on the work of F. Jostes: V, ii. 1470, for which cf. p. 117 n.

^ For a summary of the manuscript and printed sources of continental
monastic and other libraries, see Gottlieb; it is hoped to print shortly the
list of c. 75 mediaeval English catalogues consulted for this work.

- CE, Versions of the Bible, French. The Dominicans were Jean de Sy,
Jean Nicolas, William Vivien, and Jean de Chambly.

II] DIDACTIC MANUALS 21

have read them for themselves: but there is no evidence that
they were used in instructions by the parish priests till the
middle of the fifteenth century at earliest^. It is characteristic,
indeed, of mediaeval sermons and books of instruction, that the
translations of single biblical texts are always in the author's
own words, not in the words of such translations as existed.
Against the existence of vernacular translations as such, while
they remained comparatively unused, the Church made no
protest.

Much light is thrown upon the comparative rarity of biblical
study, even among the upper classes, by a comparison of the
advice given in didactic treatises to laj^ people, throughout the
middle ages. A recent collection has been made of 114 such
treatises addressed to women^, from the time of S. Jerome to the
Reformation ; but most of them come from the eleventh to the
fifteenth centuries; they are written in Latin, French, Italian,
English, Spanish, Catalan, etc., and give a good idea of the
duties and ideals held up to women of each rank and social
class, both secular and religious. Women of all classes are
exhorted again and again to the practices of pietj^ — prayer,
early rising, attendance at mass, saying of the hours, submission
to husbands, care for the poor, nursing of the sick; women of
high rank are, in addition, urged to learn to read, and study
good and virtuous books, lives of the saints, etc. : but only in a
single treatise, written in 1394, is a woman advised to read the
Bible itself. In this tract ^, written by a member of the higher
bourgeoisie of Paris, the husband writes an instruction for his
wife on her secular and sacred duties, and advises her to read
"the Bible and the Lives of the Fathers, which he possesses in
French." The date of the tract is very interesting, for it is that

^ For certain exceptions in the case of the Gottesfreunde and the Brethren
of the Common Life, see pp. 76, 89.

2 De la litteraiure didactique du moyen age s'adressant spicialement aux
femmes. Hentsch, A. A., Cahors, 1903.

3 Id. 141, Le Menagier de Paris. The greater merchants of Paris were
people of considerable importance, and their daughters had exceptional
chances of education: they might not only have private teaching, as else-
where, but they could attend grammar schools kept by women, a pheno-
menon apparently unique in Europe, and certainly without parallel in
England. There were, apparently, 21 such schools in Paris about 1380,
see Jourdain, 127.

22 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

of the twenty years before the council of Constance, when the
use of the vernacular languages for literature had been making
great strides all over Europe, and had been applied even to the
sacred books: while the consequent outburst of reinterpretation
or heresy had not yet turned the attention of the orthodox to
the need of severely limiting vernacular scriptures. It is re-
markable that this should be the solitary instance^: especially
as these didactic tracts must, from the nature of things, have
been written for women who could read or write ; — in nearly all
cases, they are dedicated to some one of exalted birth. The
tracts help us also to estimate how low in the social scale'
the abihty to read descended: one interesting manual, written
between 1307 and 1315 in rhymed Provencal, actually discusses
this question'^. The advice given in it is carefully graded accord-
ing to the rank of the hearer; the daughters of kings and emperors
are advised to learn to read and write well, because they will have
later to govern many lands. The second class is formed of the
daughters of marquises, dukes, counts and barons, — these also
should be taught to read : while the third class, composed of the
daughters of squires, judges, "solemn doctors" and gentlemen
of similar rank, causes the writer great perplexity. Opinions
differ, he says, as to whether they should be taught to read or
write: but he himself decides in the negative. With the daugh-
ters of merchants and craftsmen he has no difficulty at all: no
one suggests that reading or writing would be good for them, or
for the classes beneath them. Thus, while there are undoubted
records of the making of bibhcal translations for orthodox
princes and princesses in the middle ages, orthodox didactic
manuals shew plainly that the reading of them was not a normal
practice even among the educated laity, — a very small minority
of the population.

1 Apart from a tract of S. Jerome's, Miss Hentsch (38, S. Aldhelm's De
laude virginitatis) gives no direct evidence that the nuns addressed read the
Bible, as she imphes, p. 38, but merely shews that S. Aldhelm himself was
very familiar with it. Instances of exhortation to the reading of devotional
books, saints' Hves, etc., are on pp. 52, 133, 135, 150, 154, 181, 191, 199, 216,
225. Neither S. Louis, writing c. 1271, nor Anne de France, the daughter of
Louis XL writing c. 1504 advised their daughters to read the biblical text,
though Anne specifies in some detail the books she advises: see id. 80, 199.

- That of the much-travelled Italian, Francesco da Barberino, 1 264-1 348,
id. 106.

II] SLAVONIC TRANSLATIONS 23

On the broad question of the popularisation of biblical trans-
lations, their possession by unlettered or little lettered people,
and their use for the instruction of unlettered people, the mind
of the mediaeval Latin Church was never quite unanimous. The
first time the question of the lawfulness of vernacular versions
of the scriptures was raised was in connexion with the debatable
land between the Eastern and Western Churches, and the real
importance of the question was political: Greek or Slavonic
offices or scriptures would draw the population towards the
East, Latin towards the West. Bulgaria was Christianised from
Byzantium and accepted Eastern Christianity in 869^; Moravia
was also converted by missionaries of the Eastern Church, Cyril
and Methodius, but Methodius went to Rome about 879, and
obtained from John VIII permission to use Slavonic as the
language of the Church; after which Moravia accepted Latin
Christianity. Methodius had already translated parts of the
Bible into Slavonic^, and papal permission was given both to
use this version, and to sing mass and the divine office in
Slavonic^. The Eastern Church continued to use vernacular
scriptures and offices, — though the retention of Old Slavonic
rendered them in time as little understandable to the un-
educated* as Latin ones, — but the Latin Church withdrew the
permission to use Slavonic as soon as her position in this district
was firmly established. This withdrawal was the occasion of the
first distinctively mediaeval pronouncement on the undesirability
of biblical translations: but the main pronouncement was
directed against vernacular offices.

This occurs in a letter of Gregory VII to Vratislaus, king of
Bohemia, written in 1079: it shews in germ the subsequent
divided opinion of the Church at large, with the mass of ortho-

1 Russian Church Hist., Frere, W. H., 1918, 4.

2 Id. 10, 32; Eastern Church, Stanley, A. P., 1869, 310.

» Acta Concil., Hardouin, J., Paris, 1714, vi. pt i. p. 86. " Nor is there any
objection, against either singing mass in the Slavonic tongue, or reading
the holy gospel, or the sacred lessons of the Old and New Testament, well
translated and interpreted,. . .We command therefore, that in all the
churches in your land, the gospel shall be read in Latin, for the greater
honour: and afterwards read translated into the Slavonic tongue in the
hearing of the people, who understand no Latin." In 879, id. 61,
Methodius had been forbidden to celebrate mass in Slavonic.

* See Frere, 89-94, for the struggle over the revision of the service books.

24 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

doxy hostile to such a course. Vratislaus wrote to the pope to
ask for permission for his monks to recite the divine office in
Slavonic, and Gregory answered prohibiting such a measure.
He gave as his reason for this, that such a course would necessi-
tate the translation of portions of the divine scripture:

Since your excellency has asked that we would allow the divine
office to be said among you in Slavonic, know that we can by no
means favourably answer this your petition. For it is clear to those
who reflect often upon it, that not without reason has it pleased
Almight\' God that holy scripture should be a secret in certain places,
lest, if it were plainly apparent to all men, perchance it would be
little esteemed and be subject to disrespect; or it might be falsely
understood by those of mediocre learning, and lead to error. Nor does
it avail as an excuse that certain religious men have patiently
suffered the simple folk who asked for it, or have sent them away
uncorrected : since the primitive Church allowed many things to pass
unheeded, which, after Christianity had grown stronger, and when
religion was increasing, were corrected by subtle examination. Where-
fore we forbid what you have so imprudently demanded of the autho-
rity of S. Peter, and we cominand you to resist this vain rashness with
all your might, to the honour of Almighty God^.

This refusal shews that there were already advocates of biblical
translations, in so far as these were involved in the translation
of the divine office^, in the persons of the religious whom Vratis-
laus had quoted as favouring his request, which they did, no
doubt, from missionary motives; but the hostile pronouncement
of Gregory himself remained the opinion of the Church at large.
The question of reciting the divine office in the vernacular was
not of sufficient practical importance for this letter to be in-
cluded in the Decretum of Gratian, so that it retained only the
authority of an apostolic rescript : it had not, that is, universally
binding canonical authority, but could be quoted as a prece-
dent^.

Gregory wrote this letter in 1079. Just a hundred j^ears later
John Beleth, rector of the theological schools at Paris, composed
his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, which became the chief
liturgical authority of the next century. He gave as the reason

» PL 148, c. 555.

- This consisted entirely of the psalms and biblical passages, apart from
the hymns for the hours, and the patristic homilies at mattins.
^ CE, article on Decretals,

II] PETER WALDO 25

for his work, the general lack of understanding of the services,
due to ignorance of Latin on the part of both priests and people.
He begins:

In the primitive Church it was prohibited that any should speak,
unless there were some one to interpret. For what, I ask, does speech
profit, if it is not understood ? Assuredly, nothing. Hence there grew
in certain parts of the Church the laudable custom, that when the
gospel had been read according to the letter [in Latin], forthwith it
was explained to the people in the vulgar tongue. But what shall we
say of our own times, if scarcely or not at all there may be found any
man who understands what he reads or hears read, or who truly
perceives what he sees done or does himself? We must lament with
the prophet, etc.^

It is not clear whether Beleth here had in mind the old
Galilean custom of translating the gospel at mass^, or whether
he was referring to Eastern custom: but his long and detailed
description of the reading of the gospel at mass shews that no
such custom of translation obtained in his own day, in the
Western Church.

§ 2. The question of popular Bible reading for the laity did
not arise till a hundred years after Gregory VII, though from
that time onwards it was continuously demanded by heretical
sects down to the Reformation. From the last quarter of the
fourteenth century also it was advocated by a certain stream
of orthodox opinion in central Europe. The original demand was
connected with the rise of the Waldensians in southern France,
about 1180. The century had already seen the rise of many
heresies in southern Europe, some of the wilder ones due partly
to Eastern influences, travelling with the returning crusaders;
but the Waldensian movement was original, and, like the Lollard
movement later, was based upon the desire to approximate the
Christian polity to the more obvious features of apostolic Chris-
tianity. It was inspired by the lay reading of the New Testa-
ment. The Dominican inquisitor, Etienne de Bourbon, whose
convent was at Lyons, describes how he knows of the origin of
the Waldensians from a certain priest, rich and honoured in

^ PL 202, c. 13 : for an O.F. translation, see Bull, de la soc. des anc. textes
frang. 1884, p. 84, where "translated" in the prologue is rendered "en-
romanQast."

* See p. 213 n.

26 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

Lyons, called Bernardus Ydros, who wrote for money certain
translations for Peter Waldo :

A certain rich man of the city (Lyons), called Waldo, was curious
when he heard the gospel read, since he was not much lettered,
to know what was said. Wherefore he made a pact with certain priests,
the one, that he should translate to him the Bible : the other, that he
should write as the first dictated. Which they did ; and in like manner
many books of the Bible, and many authorities of the saints, which
they called Sentences. Which when the said citizen had often read
and learned by heart, he proposed to observe evangelical perfection
as the apostles observed it; and he sold all his goods, and despising
the world, he gave all his money to the poor, and usurped the apos-
tolic office by preaching the gospel, and those things which he had
learned by heart, in the villages and open places, and by calling to him
many men and women to do the same thing, and teaching them the

gospel by heart Who indeed, being simple and illiterate men and

women, wandered through villages and entered houses and preached
in open places, and even in churches, and provoked others to the same
course^.

When through their boldness, Etienne says, many errors arose,
the archbishop of Lyons summoned them and forbade them to
meddle with the scriptures, either by exposition or preaching.
They were declared heretics and schismatics by the papal edict
of Verona in 1184, and later at the fourth Lateran council of
1215, but defied the excommunication of the Church, and con-
tinued to travel about disguised in Provence and Lombardy,
joining themselves to other heretics, — notably in Italy, with the
Cathari or the Patarini.

The account of another contemporary is interesting, since it
is that of an Englishman who actually saw the earliest Walden-
sian translations. Walter Map wrote his book, Dc Nugis
Curialium, between the years 1181-1192^. He travelled to the
third Lateran council in 1179, and tells us that:

We saw the Waldensians at the council celebrated at Rome under
pope Alexander III. They were simple and illiterate men, named
after their leader, Waldo, who was a citizen of Lyons on the Rhone :
and they presented to the lord pope a book written in the French
tongue, in which were contained a text and gloss on the psalter, and
on very many other books of both testaments. These besought with

^ A nee. Hist. 291.

"■ Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, James, M. R., Oxford, 191 4, p. xxvi.

Ilj WALTER MAP 27

great urgency that authority to preach should be confirmed to them,
for they thought themselves expert, when they were scarcely learned
at all. . . .For in every small point of the sacred page, so many meanings
fly on the wings of virtue, such stores of wealth are accumulated, that
only he can fully exhaust them whom God has inspired. Shall not
therefore the Word given to the unlearned be as pearls before sivine,
when we know them to be fitted neither to receive it, nor to give out
what they have received ? Away with this idea, and let it be rooted
out. The ointment ran down frotn the head, even to the skirts of his
clothing: waters flow from the spring, not from the mud of public
ways^.

Map goes on to relate how he himself was set to examine two
Waldensians, and soon exposed their lack of theological learning,
b}'^ entrapping them into giving an answer to one of his questions,
which though they did not know it, was heretical and Nestorian.
His condemnation of the Waldensian desire to preach ^ certainly
imphes that of the study of the divine "Word" by the un-
learned^. The accounts of both Etienne de Bourbon and Map
shew that there was no complete Waldensian translation of the
Bible at this date^, but only those of particular books, probably,
in most cases, with a gloss or comment ; the glossed psalter they
presented was almost certainly the old Anglo-Norman psalter,

^ De Nugis, 60.

^ Waldensian "preaching" consisted largely of the recitation of passages
of the gospels, etc., in the vernacular: see p. 39 for the evidence on this point
of the record of the Inquisitor of Toulouse.

' The manuscript from which the De Nugis Curialimn is edited belonged
to John Wells, monk of Ramsey, who was for 13 years the prior of Glouces-
ter Hall, the Benedictine college at Oxford, and died in 1388. He "deter-
mined," or gave academic judgments, against both Wycliffe and Nicholas
Hereford on certain theological points : and it is interesting to find that he
was aware of the earlier papal refusal to countenance the Waldensian
biblical translations. De Nugis, p. viii.

* Berger, 35. Keller, 72. "Waldensian" as applied to a MS. may refer
either to doctrinal or linguistic characteristics: in the first sense, the MS.
may be either Provencal, Italian, Catalan, etc. No MS. of Waldo's original
translations in the dialect of the Lyonnais remains to us; the earliest Pro-
ven9al fragment is c. 1200 (Harl. 2928, which has 5 chapters of S. John,
and the rest of the MS. liturgical). The Waldensians had however a
Proven9al version in the thirteenth century, which remains to us, and which
influenced the " Vaudois " or Piedmontese version of the fourteenth century,
parts of which remain to us. V, Vaudoises [Versions']. The other early
"Waldensian" translations which remain to us are a " Plenarium," or glossed
Sunday epistles and gospels, from Metz, in the Lorraine dialect, see p. 30,
and a thirteenth century old Italian, or Catharan, translation, see p. 43.
There is also a thirteenth century Provencal gospel harmony, or life of
Christ, La Nobla Leyczon, see Cat. of Ashburnham MSS. 1853, ^S- ^^°-

28 PROHIBITION OF \rERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

and not a fresh translation in the Provencal dialect of the
Lyonnais^; and, as the later Waldensians were never agreed as
to the number of the canonical books^, and attached nothing
like the same importance to a knowledge of the Old Testament
as they did to the New, there never was a complete Waldensian
translation. But there is no doubt that the right of the laity
to draw inferences from a knowledge of the New Testament
gained through translations was the foundation of the Walden-
sian position. The Waldensian lower classes, like the orthodox
lower classes, could not read : but extraordinary stress was laid
on memorising parts of the New Testament, and Waldensian
"sermons" often consisted of the recitation of such memorised
passages: Waldensian "schools" or conventicles were gatherings
where the slightly lettered, or the alread}^ taught, could teach
such passages to others. As is often the case with those who have
not been taught to read, their power of memory was very great,
and all the Sunday gospels would often be learned by heart.

As with the Lollards later, the extent to which individual
Waldensians, or small groups of Waldensians, departed from
orthodox teaching, differed very widely. They accepted the
usual articles of the faith, or the creed, and the seven sacra-
ments^, but some doubted of the validit}' of a sacrament ad-
ministered by an unworthy minister. Some however, like the
later Lollards, rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, and
the discipline of the Church as regards fasting and the necessity
of confession. They ordained their own ministers or "magistri,"
and, according to Etienne de Bourbon, despised offerings to
saints, plain song, and the divine office, saying that "they had
seen God laugh at those who sang to Him what they wished to
say*." By all Waldensians, the taking of an oath was regarded
as forbidden by the New Testament, — a point through which
they were often detected by the inquisitors, who administered
the oath on the gospels before hearing their evidence. Many
also were pacifists, holding it unlawful to take life in battle, or
even in process of justice. They were not a completely unlettered

1 Berger, 37. 2 Keller, 72.

^ Cf . the statement on these points demanded from Waldensian ordinands :
Walden. Ursprung, 9.
* Anec. Hist. 297.

II] WALDENSIAN LEARNING 29

party^, for there is evidence that some orthodox priests^ and
many Franciscan tertiaries^ joined them; certainly some lay
nobles were "hereticated" or admitted as Waldensian magistri,
and others protected them"*; the archbishop of Metz denounced
two Waldensian masters of arts and a certain "scholasticus" from
the pulpit^. There was communication also between the heads
of the movement in France, Italy and Spain^, and it seems likely
that the heretical " schools " at Milan gave some more intellectual
teaching than the instruction in the text of the gospels afforded
by every little midnight meeting of Waldensians; one convert
from Waldensianism who became a Dominican and an inquisitor
had attended them for eighteen years'. But nevertheless,
Waldensianism never gained a hold at any university, as the
Lollard movement did in its earlier stages at Oxford. The in-
struction of the laity was carried on by the "magistri" or by the
laity themselves, and chiefly by means of vernacular gospels,
epistles, and other bibhcal books: by means of which the
. Waldensian teachers, "arguing falsely from the letter," as their
opponents said, supported the main points of their doctrine. It
was for this reason that vernacular Bibles and vernacular
"scriptures," in the wider mediaeval sense, were burned by in-

1 For the dispute as to the learning of Waldensians somewhat later, see
Die Waldenser und die vorliitherische deutsche Bibeliibersetzung. Jostes, F.,
Miinster, 1885, 7-, and Walden. Ur sprung, 1-7.

2 Lib. Sent. Thol. 253; IValden. Ursprung, 16.

3 The tertiaries on the Rhine were infected with Waldensianism, see p. 70 ,
and in Spain were forbidden to read vernacular scriptures, see p. 49. For
heretical tertiaries, probablj' rather "spiritual Franciscans" than Walden-
sians, see Lib. Sent. Thol. 298, 299, 301, 381.

* Anon, of Passau in MBPV, xiii. 299, of the Waldensians: "there was
none who dared to hinder them, on account of the power and number of
those who supported them." David of Augsburg says that in 1250 a power-
ful prince joined them, Walden. Ursprung, 7. Cf. also Robert, dauphin of
Auvergne, 1^234, who wrote Provengal verse, and diligently collected and
read all the books of the heretics, — only, as he affirmed to the Dominican
inquisitor who visited him, to render himself the firmer in the catholic faith;
he submitted finally to making a bonfire of his library, since the Dominicans
were not satisfied with his explanation. Anec. Hist. 276. In the A nn. Trevir.
II. 106, the success of the Waldensians in Metz about 1207 is ascribed to civil
strife.

6 Id. 106.

8 The "magistri" at Metz in 1208 came from the Pyrenees, Ann. Trevir.
II. 106, while the connexion between the heretics of Provence and Lombardy
was close.

• He had learnt by heart the N.T. and much of the O.T. Anec. Hist. 280.

30 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

quisitors, and prohibited by archbishops and provincial synods
wherever Waldensianism spread: not because the translations
were themselves regarded as false or heretical^, as was the case
with the Reformation versions.

The original cradle of Waldensianism in France was the
Lyonnais: from hence it spread into two chief areas, Lorraine
and the border district between France and the Empire, where
the division of secular power was favourable to its existence:
and south-westward into the Mediterranean provinces of France,
particularly the bishoprics of Toulouse and Narbonne. After the
original suppression of the Waldensians at Lyons c. 1180-90,
the next great repressive effort was made against the towns of
Lorraine, from about 1192-1208; and the next, and never per-
fectly successful effort, in the south of France, from about 1229
onwards.

The most important papal decision in the middle ages con-
cerning biblical translations was connected with the repressive
measures in Lorraine. In 1192 these began in Toul, where the
archbishop ordered all the heretics called "Vaudois" to be
brought in chains before his episcopal seat^. B3' 1199 they had
become dangerous also in Metz, for a chronicler says that :

There was also breeding and swarming in the city of Metz a sect
called Waldensians, and certain abbots were sent there to preach,
who burnt certain books translated from Latin into Romance, and
extirpated the aforesaid sect^.

In July 1199 the archbishop wrote to Innocent III, to obtain
confirmation of the repressive measures he wished to take.
Innocent answered with two letters, one to the faithful at Metz,
one personally to the archbishop. In the first he deplored that

^ Writers against the Waldensians like Etienne de Bourbon and Alain de
Lisle make no accusation of the falsity of their translations; the Anon, of
Passau is the only writer who accuses the translators of inaccuracy through
insufi&cient learning, MBVP, xiii. 299, and he does not suggest that their
mistranslations had any doctrinal significance.

2 Martene, Thes. iv. 1180; cf. Berger, 39.

' Chronica Albrici, Mon. Germ., Script, xxiii. 878. Chaire Fran. 238, on
the strength of Innocent Ill's letter to the archbishop of Metz in 1 199 about
Waldensian translations, has the sentence: "Before 1 199 translations of the
gospels and epistles, accompanied by commentaries, circulated in certain
dioceses [of France]," which is misleading, as implying an orthodox origin
of the practice, and omitting to mention the subsequent burning of the
translations by the papal inquisitors. See also p. 39 n.

II] INNOCENT Ill's LETTER TO METZ 31

certain heretics had resisted their parish priests, alleging reasons
from the scriptures^:

The bishop of Metz has signified to us that both in his city and in
his diocese a multitude of laj^men and women, led to a large extent by
a desire of understanding the scriptures, have had translated for
themselves the gospels, epistles of S. Paul, the psalter, the moralisa-
tion on Job'-, and many other books in the French tongue. They
intend that with this translation, made thus at their own discretion
(would that it had been made with prudence as well), laymen and
women shall presume to hold forth on such matters, and to preach to
each other. . . . Now although the desire of understanding holy scrip-
tures, and zeal for exhorting in accordance with them, is not to be
reprehended but rather commended, yet in this matter certain
laymen appear to be justly accused: because they hold secret con-
venticles, usurp to themselves the office of preaching, elude the sim-
plicity of priests, and scorn the company of those who cling not to
these things. . . .The secret mysteries of the faith ought not therefore
to be explained to all men in all places, since they cannot be every-
where understood by all men: but only to those who can conceive
them with a faithful mind ; for what says the apostle to simple people?
Even as babes in Christ I have fed you ivith milk and not with meat. . . .
For such is the depth of divine scripture, that not only the simple
and illiterate, but even the prudent and learned, are not fully suffi-
cient to try to understand it. For many seek and fail in their search^,
whence it was of old rightly written in the divine law, that the beast
which touched the mount should be stoned: lest, apparently, any simple
and unlearned person should presume to attain to the sublimity of holy
scripture. . . . Seek not out the things that are above thee. For what says
the apostle? Not to think ^nore highly than one ought to think, but to
think soberly. . . . Although learning is most necessary for priests for the
sake of teaching,. . .nevertheless simple priests ought not to be des-
pised, even by scholastics, since the priestly ministry ought to be
honoured in them.

In any case, Innocent concluded, the office of reproving un-
suitable priests did not belong to the laity, and he exhorted the
faithful to withdraw themselves from such errors, lest severer
measures should be taken. At the same time, he wrote to the
archbishop, warning him against either tolerating heretical
pravity, or trying to gather in the tares before the harvest, and

^ PL 214, CO. 695-9. Dated 12 July, 1199; fipistolarum Innocentii III,
Baluzius, S., 1682, torn. i. p. 432.

^ The work of Gregory the Great.

' An often quoted version of psalm 64, 6 (Vulgate, 63, 7), Quia multi
dsfecerunt scrutantes scrittinio.

32 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

especially lest impatience should turn the misguided zeal of un-
lettered men into heresy. He asked for further information
about the way of life of these heretics who held secret conven-
ticles, and especially about the origin of the biblical translation,
before taking further steps:

We are completely ignorant of the opinions and way of life of those
who have thus translated the holy scriptures, or of those who teach
them this translation (neither of which could be done without a
knowledge of letters). . . . Warn them to desist from those things which
appear blameworthy, and not to clairti for themselves the office of
others. Enquire diligentl}^ who was the author of this translation ;
what was his intention: the faith of those who use it: the reason of
their teaching : whether they venerate the apostolic see and the catho-
lic Church : so that ... we may the better understand what ought to
be decreed.

We do not possess the archbishop's answer, giving Innocent
the required information, but it must have been sent between
July and December 1199, for on December 9th Innocent issued
a commission to the abbot of Citeaux and two other Cistercian
abbots, to assist the archbishop of Metz in suppressing heresy^.
This commission throws much light on the interpretation his
earlier letter to Metz had been given by contemporaries, as con-
demning the lay use of vernacular scriptures: the three abbots
were so certain he had condemned them that they burnt all
biblical translations found in the hands of the Vaudois^. The long
string of quotations, "Cast not pearls before swine,... Seek not out
the things ivhich are above thee," had been taken as discountenan-
cing the use of the Waldensian translations, as they were probably ■
intended to do. This was in accordance with the whole tenor of
the letter: and indeed, Innocent, in his commission to the three
abbots, spoke as if he had already condenmed the translation,
though he had actually only condemned its users. He told the
abbots that at Metz:

No small multitude of laymen and women presume to hold forth
among themselves at secret conventicles, in order to learn a certain
translation of holy scripture, . . . even when prohibited : they despise
those who differ from them, and study the said translation as much as

^ PL 214, c. 699.

2 Alberic de Trois Fontaines, in Mon. Germ., Scriptores, xxiii. 878.

II] INNOCENT Ill's INTENTION 33

heretofore. They are to be condemned for holding secret conventicles
. . . and refusing the fellowship of those who do not receive the said
translation^.

The abbots were to go to Metz, and, with the archbishop,
summon before them "those who favour these things and
adhere to the aforesaid translation^" — with the result that
they burnt all that they could find of such books.

The measures taken, however, were not completely successful;
in I20I the pope sent the cardinal bishop, Guido of Praeneste,
to Cologne as his legate, to aid in suppressing heresy^, and in
1207-8 archbishop Bertram of Metz again had trouble with the
Waldensians, particularly with two "magistri" and a "scholas-
ticus" who had travelled to Metz from the Pyrenees*. From
Metz and Lorraine the heretics spread into the Empire, where
they were found in considerable numbers in Strassburg in 1211,
in Bavaria and Austria in 1218, and at Trier and Mainz in 1231.

The part played by Innocent in dealing with the Waldensians
at Metz is of great interest. He displayed a broader mindedness
than the local archbishop^, but ended by confirming what the
latter desired: the suppression of the translation. His letters dealt
with "vernacular scriptures" in the wider sense, but included
the translation of biblical books, since it explicitly mentioned
their names; there was no written prohibition, but the whole
tenor of the letter, with its string of citations, "Cast not pearls
before swine," etc., was hostile. There seems no doubt that at
the tim.e Innocent's letters were regarded as giving papal sanc-
tion to the condemnation of biblical translation ; contemporaries
interpreted the first letter by the action of the three abbots who

^ This was not wonderful, since all the faithful were bidden to report
cases of heresy among their numbers to their parish priests. The recantation
of a heretic before the inquisition had to be accompanied by whatever
information he possessed about his fellow heretics, or those whom he had,
at the time, "beheved to be good and honest men."

2 All three letters of Innocent deal with the subject of lay preaching, as
much as lay study of the scriptures: but this sentence, and the whole letter,
shew that the primary mark of the Waldensians was that they used a
certain translation of the scriptures, and taught it to each other verbally in
secret conventicles. See pp. 38-41.

^ Ann. Trevir. 11. 98. ■* Id. 11. 106.

* P. Mandonnet believes that the Curia was always more favourable than
the local bishops to popular religious rhovements among laymen, as in this
case: see V, 11. 1467.

D.w.B. 3

34 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

were Innocent's commissioners. These had been told to summon
before them — first in the Hst of heretical symptoms — "those
who favour these things and adhere to the aforesaid translation " ;
as the Metz chronicler says, "they burnt certain books trans-
lated from Latin into Romance^, and extirpated the aforesaid
sect."

Part of Innocent's letter of 1199 was embodied in the Decretal
of Gregory IX and became of universal canonical application:
but the string of citations, "Cast not pearls before swine," etc.,
was omitted, and the letter, known as Cum ex injuncto^ became
chiefly a prohibition of conventicles and lay preaching. As such
it was interpreted by the official commentators^, without direct
reference to the subject of biblical translations. In this form it
was known to the inquisition and all canonists: and yet in-
quisitors acted on the theory that biblical translations were
forbidden, and other theologians stated as a fact of common know-
ledge that it was canonically forbidden to the laity to have the
sacred books in the vernacular*. Thirteenth century inquisitors
certainl}^ burnt or confiscated biblical translations wherever they
found them, not only in those provinces where their possession
was expressl)' forbidden b}^ the local synod. It is therefore very

1 French, not German ; the dialect of Lorraine. Berger beheves, with great
probability, that the translations of the "epistles and gospels " was that of
the Sunday epistles and gospels. He believes that an existent early thirteenth
plenary (for plenary, see infra p. 39, n. 4) in the Lorraine dialect,
of Messine provenance, was one of these Waldensian books. Berger, 40.
We possess also an early thirteenth century manuscript of the Moralities
on Job of S. Gregory, in a dialect very near to that of the Lorraine dialect
of the plenary; id. 42. " Romance" in Godefroi, Dictionnaire de I'Ancienne
Langue frangaise, is defined as having two meanings, (1) French as opposed
to Latin, (2) a work in the vulgar tongue of any Latin nation. Thus
the earl of Warwick bequeathed in 1359 his library of "romances," including
French gospels and a psalter, etc. [Bibliom. 193) ; and the synod of Tarragona,
1 233, absolutely forbade the possession of the Bible in " Romance," probably
referring either to Catalan, or Proven9al, or the vulgar tongue; cf. p. 48, n. i.
In nearly all cases, however, "Romance" means vernacular French.

^ Corpus luris Canonici, Friedberg, A., Leipzig, 1881, pars ii. c. 785;
= Decretal. Gregor. IX, lib. v. tit. vii. cap. xii.

' For convenience, see them as cited (the Glossa ordinaria, Hostiensis, and
Johannes Andreae) by the inquisitor general of the kingdom of Aragon,
the Franciscan E3'^meric. He completed his famous manual, the Directoriuni
I iiquisitorum, in 1376; for the Cum ex injuncto and glosses, see F. Pegna's
1607, Venice, ed. of Eymeric's Direct. Inq., index of glossators; also pp. loo
and 565, where Pegna gives the full form of Innocent's letter, though Eymeric
comments only on the Cum ex injuncto. * See p. 84.

Il] CUM EX INJUNCTO 35

difficult not to believe that Innocent Ill's letter of 1199 was one
of the foundations of the action of the inquisitors and the behef
of the theologians. It was available as a precedent in its original
hostile form till the pontificate of Gregory IX, and, although
incorporated in its less hostile form in this pope's Decretal, it was
rendered unnecessary by the prohibition of Toulouse during this
pontificate. This prohibition was of wider than provincial
application, and specially confirmed by the presence of Gregory
IX's legate. The powers there granted to the inquisition were
generally mentioned in the commissions of later inquisitors as
granted to them also, in addition to particular ones given at the
time : so that, after 1229, inquisitors who found the use of bibhcal
translations giving rise to heresy could have suppressed them in
reliance on this and later pro\dncial constitutions, even if they
were not aware of the full form of Innocent Ill's letter to Metz.
It was not till 1398 that certain Dutch lawyers, writing out of
opposition to the inquisition, boldly claimed that the Cum ex
injuncto itself implied a commendation of German books of
edification, in the words "the desire of understanding holy
scriptures and... exhorting in accordance with them is not to
be reprehended but rather commended^"

Waldensianism spread from Metz not only into the Empire,

1 During the struggle over the lawfulness of vernacular Bibles, and their
promiscuous reading by the laity, at the Reformation, this letter of Inno-
cent III was expUcitly'quoted as a "Decree" forbidding such translations
and use. Luther printed his German New Testament in 152 1 : Erasmus wrote
in defence of popular Bible reading: and the theological faculty in Paris
condemned his propositions in 1527. They said that his refusal to prohibit
the laity from reading any book of the O.T. was rash and impudent, since
by a decree of the apostolic see the reading of many such books was "long
ago" prohibited to the laity: the same causes for prohibiting their reading
still existed, as when Innocent III drew up a "decree" about these matters
(a fragment of which is incorporated in his own words in the De haereticis.
as the Cum ex injuncto). Erasmus answered that if the decree of that pope,
or any other, had at any time been issued against the rashness of men, he
did not consider that it was now binding on the whole Church. See also
p. ion. Harney, 214, says of this letter of Innocent III: "Neither then nor
since has there been any constitution which apphes to the whole Church,
directly and clearly, in this matter; but Spaniards took measures for Spain,

Frenchmen for France, Belgians for the Netherlands To speak strictly

Tof the Cum ex injuncto], it does not touch the matter in hand, for the pope
did not (there at least) censure the reading of scripture by the laity in the
vulgar tongue, or forbid women to read it in any medium: but he con-
demned their reading it, if it led to the despising of priests, or the usurpation
of the office of preaching."

3—2

36 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

but westward into the He de France. In 1210 the archbishop of
Sens, Pierre de Corbeil, the bishop of Paris, and certain other
bishops, issued an edict for the burning of certain heretics, and
the confiscation of all books of a theological nature written in
French :

We command concerning books of theological nature written in
Romance, that they shall be handed over to the diocesan bishops,
including Credos and Paternosters in Romance (except lives of the
saints), and this before the feast of the Purification ; and that all their
possessors shall be regarded as hereticaP.

There is no record that the edict was promulgated at a pro-
vincial synod: Paris, Sens and Metz were not far distant from
each other, and the edict seems to have been issued in accordance
with the measures taken bj- papal authority to suppress heresy
at Metz.

The alarming development of heresy in the south of France
had given rise to the labours of the Dominican order, and the
efforts of these friars were, throughout the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, chiefly responsible for its repression,
partly by personal preaching, partly by raising the standard of
theological education through their "studia," partly by a
vigorous use of the powers of the inquisition. In 1229 a synod
was held at Toulouse : the see was not yet an archbishopric, but
the synod was of far wider than provincial authority 2, for its
decrees were confirmed by the archbishops of Narbonne, Bor-
deaux and Auch, many bishops and other prelates, and — more
important still — by the legate of the apostolic see, Bonaventura,
cardinal deacon of S. Angelo; also by the count of Toulouse and
many secular barons. It was decreed that":

Lay feople shall not have books of scripture, except the psalter and
the divine office : and they shall not have these hooks in the vulgar tongue.
Moreover we prohibit that lay people should be permitted to have

1 Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, Denifle, H., Paris, 1889, 1. 70.

2 H. Reusch, in his l72dex der Verbotenen Biicher, Bonn, 1883, has a good
and clear section on mediaeval prohibitions of biblical translations in synods,
but underrates the authority of the synod of Toulouse, and ignores the de-
crees at Beziers: cf. i. 43. He was also unaware of the prohibition at Trier,
1 23 1, and the imperial edict of 1369. For emphasis on the papal confirma-
tion of the edicts of Toulouse, see Harney, 183, who says the synod was of
"greater than provincial authority," and Hegelmaier, 135.

* Mansi, xxiii. 197.

Il] SYNOD OF TOULOUSE 37

books of the Old or New Testament, except perchance any should
wish from devotion to have a psalter, or a breviary for the divine
office, or the hours of the blessed Virgin: but we most strictly pro-
hibit their having even the aforesaid books translated into the vulgar
tongue.

There is evidence that the severe decrees of Toulouse and
Paris were not merely regarded as exceptional local measures
to deal with heresy. The Dominican order itself was not limited
to any locality, and its rules would bind men of all nationalities,
but a learned Dominican of the seventeenth century himself
points out "that he could not doubt that it was according to
the spirit of S. Dominic, and of this council, that it was decreed
in the Dom.inican constitutions, distinction 2, cap. 15, text. 3,
that the lay brothers should not have a psalter," since the order
of friars preacher was instituted in the same region at the same
time^. That individual preachers made some effort to translate
books of edification, probably not the biblical text itself, is
shewn however by the general prohibition of such action issued
by the Dominican chapter-general in 1242, at Bologna, in the
words 2;

Neither shall any brother for the future translate sermons, or colla-
tions, or other holy scriptures.

The words do not imply that the prohibition was inspired by
a previous translation of the canonical books themselves, but
it doubtless covered them; the context shews also that such
translations of holy books as had been made, were for the use
of houses of nuns or tertiaries. The Dominicans at the time were

' Harney, 1S4.

- For the decree, see Martene, Thes. iv. c. 1684, Reichert's Mon.
Ord. Fratrum Predica. iii. 24. For German Dominicans and nunneries,
see p. 77. There is no evidence that in this case the Dominican translations
had been inspired by general missionary zeal for the instruction of the faith-
ful laity. Though missionaries such as the friars had doubtless more occasion
than other classes to consider the expedient of biblical translations, such
an expedient was not encouraged by orthodoxy in the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries. In 131 1 it was enacted, for the furtherance of the con-
version of Jews and heathen, that two professors should be appointed at the
Roman Curia, Oxford, Bologna and Salamanca, skilled in Hebrew, Arabic
and Chaldean, to translate books in these tongues into Latin, for the sake
of those who should eventually be missionaries to such peoples: but no
provision or mention was made for providing translations of the Vulgate
into any foreign tongue. Gieseler, iv. 195. For the keeping of the decree see
Eng. Franc. Hist. 217.

38 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

anxious that the brothers should not waste their energies by the
direction of convents of sisters: some provinces continued this
pohcy, though in Germany there was a marked change later in
the century.

A long hst of anti-heretical measures was again issued by the
provincial council for Narbonne, held at Beziers in 1246.
Chapter xxxvi enacted that certain officials

Shall see that it is rigorously carried out that theological books
shall not be kept, either by the laity in Latin, or by them or by clerks
in the vulgar tongue. The penalties for the aforesaid matters shall
be, etc.... and they shall extirpate all other things which tend to
heresy^.

In view of the evidence given before inquisitors, "theological
books " in this clause was certainly held to cover bibhcal trans-
lations. This is clearly shewn by the account which Etienne de
Bourbon, himself an inquisitor, gives of the heretics of south
France, about the period of the synods of Toulouse and Beziers^.
The signs by which heretics may be known, he says, are first,
their presumptuous and unwarrantable usurpation of the office
of preaching, and teaching of holy doctrine.

And especially of the gospels and other books of the New Testament,
which they learn firmly by heart in the vernacular, and mumble the

one to the other For when they approach the house of simple

men (for they shun the able and the learned), they say they know
some good prayers, and they have fair forms of prayer, which they first
say and teach, and then the gospel in the vulgar tongue, which they
tell and go over according to the literal text, not merely expounding
the honest meaning of the words, whenever they find those who are
curious and willing to learn. For I myself have seen a young cowherd,
who for the space of only a year stayed in the house of a certain
Waldensian heretic, who learned by heart and retained with such
diUgent attention and careful repetition in his mind what he heard,
that within that year he had learnt and remembered forty of the
Sunday gospels (without counting the feast days), and he had learnt
all these in his own tongue word for word, apart from other words of
sermons and prayers. For I have seen some lay people who were so
imbued with their teaching, that they could repeat by heart much of
the evangeUsts, as for instance Matthew or Luke, and especially those
things which are said there of the instruction and words of the Lord,
so that they would hardly miss a word there, but repeat them in order :

1 Mansi, xxni. 724. ^ 1229 and 1246; Etienne died in 1261.

II] WALDENSIAN TRIALS 39

which matter I relate because of their diligence in evil, and the negli-
gence of catholics in good, for very many are so unmindful of their
soul and their salvation, that they scarcely know their Paternoster
or Credo, or teach them to their families^.

That the decisions of Toulouse and Beziers continued in force
is also shewn in the register of Bernard Gui, who was vicar of the
Dominican province of Toulouse, and "inquisitor general of
heretical pravity in the kingdom of France, and specially in the
parts about Toulouse"^" from i6 Jan. 1307 to 1323, — a man who
between 1308 and 1323 pronounced 930 sentences as inquisitor,
and sent 114 heretics to the flames 3. In the confessions of the
Waldensians, — not the only heretical sect dealt with, — there are
several explicit references to the reading of translations, gener-
ally of the epistles and gospels: several references which shew
that the reading of such books was the sign by which the de-
ponent recognised the reader as a heretic: and very numerous
references to the reading of Waldensian books whose nature is
not specified, though analysis of the confessions shews that they
were the same described by other members of the conventicle as
"epistles and gospels." A certain Bernard of Toulouse confessed
that he had seen two heretics, father and son, in his house, and
heard the son " read in a certain book of the gospels and epistles,
as he said"; another woman heard the same two heretics read
the gospels and epistles from a certain book * ; others heard them

^ Anec. Hist. 307-9. ^ Lib. Sent. Thol. 273, 279.

' Les freres prtcheurs en Gascogne, Paris, 1885, 386.

* Lib. Sent. Thol. 10. It is noteworthy that in this inquisitor's record, as
in AM and elsewhere, reference is so often made to the use of "gospel and
epistle books," or what were later loosely called " plenaries," by the heretics:
Etienne de Bourbon expressly states that they learned "the Sunday gospels
and epistles" by heart. This shews that the argument sometimes put for-
ward that particular manuscript plenaries could not have been made for
use by French or German Waldensians, or Lollards, because they set no
store on liturgical books, is false: the evidence shews again and again that
books of liturgical gospels and epistles were the form in which Bible reading
heretics used the sacred text more often than not. Foxe, in AM, iv. 201, is
naivel}^ surprised that the heretic Hun, who possessed a Lollard Bible
with the heretical prologue, and was formally condemned after death, went
to daily mass. No doubt many early Waldensians and Lollard heretics did
the same, or, at least, went on Sundays and festivals. The Lollard Purvey
would scarcely have agitated for the reading of a translation of the liturgical
gospels and epistles at mass (see p. 272), if he had not contemplated the
attendance of his followers. The word "plenary" is derived from liber
plenaries, missale plenarium, which in the ninth century denoted the com-

40 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

also "read in a certain book." Another man first suspected an-
other of heresy from "seeing him reading in a certain book. . .
and he heard him speak excellently about God, and from the
epistles and gospels^," and a woman heard another heretic "read
many words from the epistles and gospels^." A certain William

went to a house with others and sat round the fire, and there was
there a certain man whom he did not know, and then that man pulled
out a certain book and read many words from the book, and it seemed
to him that the words were from the gospels, and immediately when
he, William, heard this, he thought and believed that that man was
one of the heretics^.

Two others confessed that the Waldensians "preach from the
gospels and epistles and other sacred scriptures, which they cor-
rupt by their explanation like masters of error who know not
how to be disciples of truth, since preaching and exposition of
holy scripture is completely forbidden to laymen *." A priest who
had joined the Waldensians, and was afterwards burnt as a
relapsed heretic, confessed that he had associated with Walden-
sians, and that "he knew and saw and heard that the Walden-
sians preach sometimes after supper at night from the gospels
and epistles in the vulgar tongue^." Another man "had seen in
the house of his father and mother a certain old man, whom he
did not know, and in the presence of himself and others of the
household the old man drew out a certain book and began read-
ing to them many words ^." A woman saw two men sitting in a
certain house by firelight, and one of them said holy words, and
then the other opened a book, and read many words from it;
and one of them told her that they were friends of God, and then
she suspected their actions, because of their words, and because
they read from the book '. The heretics often confessed merely

plete Latin missal, with the sacramentarium, graduate and lectionarium.
By the thirteenth century, however, the name had come to mean collections
of Sunday or feast day epistles and gospels, without the mass prayers, and
very often with glosses, or comments (postillae). Such plenaries were some-
times in the vernacular, and were for private use only: there was never an
official issue of a Latin or vernacular plenary. See Plenarien in HH.

» Lib. Sent. Thol. 23. 2 /^. 113. 3 /^ i_^8.

* Id. 264. 5 Id. 254. 6 7^_ 106.

' Id. 108. The use of the term "friend of God " of a Waldensian at Tou-
louse before 1261 is interesting: they probablj' had some influence on the
" Friends of God " in the Empire in the next century. See p. 75. " Friend of
God" is also the meaning of "Bogomil," — a Bulgarian heretic.

II] BIBLE READING IN ITALY 41

that they had heard Waldensian preaching, or, in the usual
formula, "heard their words, admonitions and preaching": but
the entries shew that this preaching consisted very largely of
Bible reading. One man went to the house of a certain old man,
a heretic, " and heard there his preaching, which he used to read
in a certain book^"; "the younger heretic used to read in a
certain book those words which he said and taught^." Another
man has been in the cellar of a certain house by moonlight, and
heard one of the heretics who was reading in a certain book some
words about God^. Many other entries state that he or she "had
seen the heretic reading in a book," or had themselves "read in
the books of the heretics*" : in any case, the register shews that
the reading of biblical translations was regarded as very serious
evidence of heresy.

§ 3. Three points stand out in connexion with the history of
popular Bible reading in Italy. First, the Waldensians and a
kindred sect were strong in Lombardy, and it is generally
admitted that existent manuscripts of Italian biblical trans-
lations go back to versions made and popularised by them early
in the thirteenth century 5; this is not disputed, as it is for
instance in the case of the earhest German versions. Secondly,
we have no evidence of the express prohibition of such versions
by any Italian synod. Thirdly, since the inquisition was used
against the Bible reading heretics in Italy as well as France and
Germany in the thirteenth century, it is not likely that Romance
versions were considered suitable for the laity earlier than in any
other European country.

The Waldensians spread from the south of France into Italy
at an early date, dnd very soon coalesced with the existent
Lombard heretics, known as the Cathari^ or Patarini. The
Patarini had originally, about 1085, been an orthodox party in
Milan, the followers of the deacon Arialdus, an extreme opponent
of clerical marriage. Manichaean heresy had, however, existed

1 Lib. Sent. Thol. 112. - Id. 140. » /^ 107.

* Cf. id. pp. 10, 12, 54, 61, 66, loi, no, 137, 138, 170, 180, 186, 197; for
•a man who made a burse to carry a heretic's book, p. 50; for those who took
charge of heretics' books, pp. 50, 170, 186, 197.

5 Cf. S. Berger, La Bible italienne au moyen age, Rom. xxill. (1894),
358-431; and V, Italieiines [Versions], in. 1018, 1020.

« Cathari =the original of the German " ketzer" or heretic.

42 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

both in eastern and western Europe from S, Augustine's day,
and about 1150 Italian heretics of this type, the Cathari,
appropriated the name Patarini, and became partly confounded
with them; similar Manichaean or dualistic sects existed in the
Balkans as the Bogomils, or "friends of God," and in France
as the Albigensians. The Cathari or Patarini had already been
condemned as heretical by the decree of the third Lateran
council of 1179^, when Peter Waldo had presented his trans-
lations, and asked in vain for confirmation of his way of life.
He and his followers were not condemned as heretics in the
decrees of this council: but in 11 84^ Lucius III did condemn
both the "poor men of Lyons," and the Itahan Cathari, and
ordered the setting up of an inquisition for heresy in each parish
of the infected districts, both in France and Italy. From this
time there was very close connexion between the Waldensians
and the Cathari, and they were for a time united in one organisa-
tion. The Cathari, however, owing to original Manichaean
influence, always tended to deviate more widely from orthodoxy
than the Waldensians : but they borrowed from them a devotion
to the study of vernacular versions of the Bible. The Walden-
sians seem, in return, to have borrowed from them the sacrament
of the "consolamentum," by which a postulant was "haereti-
cated" or "made perfect": at this ceremony S. John's gospel
was laid on the postulant's head, with certain prayers, and he
became a Waldensian elder, bound to a life of poverty and
preaching. The Cathari in Lombardy, hke the Waldensians,
held "schools" or conventicles for the memorising of the gospel
text, etc., and their headquarters at Milan, — the original home
of the Patarini, — formed the most famous of all the so-called
Waldensian schools. The emperor Otto IV, on his way to Rome
in 1209 to receive the imperial crown, issued at the prayer of the
bishop of Turin an imperial edict against the "heretical Walden-
sians, and all who sow the tares of falsehood in the diocese of
Turin ^," — tares that were sown by the same methods as in
Provence and Lorraine.

1 Mansi, xxii. 231. ^ Id. xxii. 476.

' Monumenta Historiae Patriae, edita iussu Regis Caroli Alberti, Turin,
1840, IV. 487; " zizaniam seminant falsitatis": ecclesiastical comparisons of
heretics to "tares" go back much earher than papal or episcopal compari-
sons of Lollard and lolium, cf. pp. 31, 83.

II] -^ EARLY ITALIAN TRANSLATIONS 43

The group of translations which was the result of heretical
propaganda was made about the middle of the thirteenth cen-
tury, and is based, as can be seen from the arrangement of their
chapters, on a family of Latin manuscripts which were not used
in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries^. They are not due to
any one translator, but are of a popular character; we possess
mid-fourteenth century manuscripts, the marginal notes of
which indicate lay ownership or even authorship. The earliest
existent translations are an early thirteenth century copy of the
gospels in old Italian, with portions of a Catharan ritual 2. The,
earliest Italian psalters are fourteenth century, and are based
on the old Norman psalter, which was one of the biblical books
presented to the pope at the third Lateran,in 1179^. The Tuscan
or Lombardic gospels are clearly founded on the Waldensian
Provengal texts, even following the Provengal when that departs
from the Vulgate rendering'*; the same is the case with the
Tuscan texts of the Acts, Pauline and Catholic epistles, and the
Apocalypse. There is no evidence for the possession of these
translations by orthodox lay people in the thirteenth century,
but we have a copy of the gospels copied by a political prisoner
in 1369 at the request of a Venetian nobleman^, and other
slightly later manuscripts copied by laymen. The earliest case
of work by a friar upon a translation is that of Domenico
Cavalca, who died in 1342, and who added a gloss to an already
existent translation of the Acts of the Apostles^: there is no
evidence, however, that he intended it for lay use. There is
other e\ddence that in the fifteenth century the friars possessed
copies or wrote modernised versions of the old Italian texts.
The evidence, however, is much too scanty for such a statement
as that the friars were the chief agents in popularising biblical
translations in Italy in the middle ages: we actually know only

i-V, III. 1015. * Id. V. 774.

' Id. III. 1020; Berger, 77. * V, in. 1020.

6 Rom. XXIII. 387; V, III. 1018.

* V, III. 1017. This article on lialiennes [Versions] contradicts itself on
pp. 1016 and I022 as to the work of Dominicans on the Bible in the thir-
teenth and fourteenth centuries. There is no mention in the earlier list
of translators to justify the statement "that towards the end of the thir-
teenth century the translation of the O.T., apart from the psalms and the
sapiential books, was exclusively the work of certain Franciscans or Domini-
cans," p. 1022.

44 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

that Cavalca paraphrased the Acts before 1342, that Nicholas
de Neridono, a Dominican, copied an Italian Bible in 1466^,
that another fifteenth century friar wrote a Venetian psalter,
that two manuscripts belonged to Dominican convents, one
1363-1414, the other in 1472, and that there are a few traces of
the possession of translations by individual Dominicans or
Franciscans in the fifteenth century^.

With the exception of Cavalca, the earliest Italian friars to
undertake the work of translation were those of the late middle
ages, after the invention of printing. In 1477 Marino of Venice
helped issue a fresh edition of the Bible, with Nicholas de Lyra's
expositions; at about that date Bartholomew of Modena, an
inquisitor, translated or re-edited the psalter, and in 1474
Frederick of Venice prepared for publication the Apocalypse
with a comment. It is however notable, and in contrast to the
early printed editions in Germany, that the first Italian printed
Bible was the work of a religious, the Camaldolese Benedictine
Nicolo di Malherbi^. The latter says in his preface that many
ancient partial translations existed, all anonymous: he made a
very free use of such translations, following, however, in the
main the usual Italian text, and printed his edition interspersed
with many glosses; this, printed at Venice, was very often
reprinted.

Historical references to mediaeval Italian translations are few.
Dante wrote his De Vulgari Eloquentia about 1320, but without
reference to biblical translations, such as might have been hoped
for in the chapter devoted to the subjects for which the vulgar
tongue is fitting**. There is however a ver}^ interesting passage
in Passavanti's Trattato della Scienza, which shews that this
Dominican, who died in 1357, was not in favour of the study of
holy scripture by lay people, or of the increase of such transla-
tions into the vernacular: and this though he contends eagerly

^ i?ow. XXIII. 363; V, III. 1015-19: cf. Mandonnet's description of the work
of Dominicans in Italy, id. ii. 1466. Cavalca did not translate the text of the
Acts, as Mandonnet says, but used an earlier translation, cf. in. 1017; the
other friars he quotes are all of late fifteenth century date.

^ V, III. 1022-.

' Rom. XXIII. 364. Parallel cases are the issue of the Dutch Cologne Bible
in 1480, especially for religious, and a possible edition at Valencia, 1477, by
the Dominican Borrell.

* De Vulgari Eloquentia, trans. Ferrers Howell, A. G., London, 1890.

IlJ PASSAVANTI 45

for the knowledge of holy scripture by all people "according to
their degree," and himself published his manual on Penance in
Italian for the instruction of the simple. He says that:

Each Christian is bound to have some knowledge of holy scripture,
and each according to the state and condition and rank that he holds :
for in one manner should the priest and guide of souls know it, and
in another manner the master and doctor and preacher: those who
ought to step down into the deep sea of scripture, and know and under-
stand the hidden mysteries, so as to be^eady for the instruction of
others, and to be prepared to render a reason, as the apostle says,
for the things of the faith and of scripture, to whoever shall ask it.
And in yet another manner the laity and unlettered parish priests
are bound to have it ; to whom it is sufficient to know in general the
ten commandments, the articles of the faith, the sacraments of the
Church, the sins, and ecclesiastical ordinances: the doctrine of the
holy gospel, as far as is necessary to their salvation, and as much as
they hear from their rectors and the preachers of the scriptures and
the faith : not searching them subtly, nor putting the foot down too
deeply into the sea of scriptvire, which not all people can do, nor ought
they to wish to scan it: because very often one slips and drow^ns
oneself in incautious and curious and vain researches. But each one
ought to know, and study to know, as much as befits his office, and
the status which he holds^.

Throughout this tract on Knowledge, Passavanti uses the term
"holy scriptures" or "the scriptures" very loosely, generally
to include both the canonical and patristic books, though once,

^ Lo Specchio della vera penitenza, Passavanti, J., ed. Polidori, Florence,
1863. The Trattato della Scienza is one of Passavanti's separate tracts, found
in the MSS. and in the early editions at the end of Lo Specchio, and treated
as part of it. The passage quoted is pp. 278-9. The whole tract on Knou-
ledge is very interesting, but quite normally mediaeval in tone: there is no-
thing to shew that the clergy in Italy were more progressive or liberal
in their attitude to vernacular scriptures, or other subjects, than in other
European countries c. 1350. The attitude is almost precisely similar to friar
Butler's tract, of c. 1399: see p. 290. Great emphasis is laid on the need of an
instructed priesthood for the instruction of the laity, the examples of S.
Dominic, S. Jerome, etc. being quoted. Not only masters and doctors ought
to study holy scriptures, but other priests according to their condition:
for in them we read what we ought to believe, to hope for, to love, and to do
(p. 284). " First, we should seek for divine knowledge in the scriptures of
the holy prophets and the holy gospels, and the apostleg;. . .we ought to
read books of holy doctors, approved bj' the Church, which expound the
scriptures wisely: and not to seek it in books of philosophy and worldly
poets ; ... as the eyes are bound to care for and supervise the other m.embers,
so are doctors and preachers bound to supervise the people : and as blindness
of the eyes is a scandal to all the body, so the ignorance of priests and doc-
tors is a scandal and a danger to all the body of holy Church " (p. 291).

46 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

clearly to mean only the canonical. He discusses the existent
translations of "the scriptures," probably as including both
canonical and patristic books, in his day, and decides that they
should be read only with very great caution, since they were
often false, and especially since they could translate only the
literal, and not the moral, allegorical and mystical meanings.

In certain books of scriptures and of the doctors which are trans-
lated into the vulgar tongue, one may read, but with great caution:
because many of them are found false and corrupt, either through
the fault of the scribes, who do not generally fully understand them,
or through the fault of the translators, who do not understand the
deep passages of the scriptures, or the subtle and obscure sayings of
the saints, and do not explain them according to the interior and
spiritual understanding, but only the rind of the letter, according to
grammar, when they turn them into the vulgar tongue. And because
they have not the spiritual understanding, and because our vulgar
tongue is lacking in the right words, they expound it often coarsely
and rudely, and often not truly. In short, it is too perilous: for they
may fall so easily into error i.

Apart from that, he observes, they debase the scriptures; some
envelope them in rhetorical and trivial glosses ; some abbreviate
4hem, like the French and Provencal scribes, some obscure them
ih dark language, hke the Germans, Hungarians and English;
some make them trifling and crude like the Lombards ; some use
ambiguous words Hke the Neapolitans; some make them rugged

^ Trat. d. Scienza, 289. With Passavanti's dicta on translations should be
compared the preface of an anonymous, but probably noble and lay, trans-
lator of the gospels into Tuscan, or reviser of the current translation into
contemporary Tuscan: the work dates from the early fifteenth, or possibly
even the late fourteenth century, and the author, with his insistence on the
scholastic difficulties in the work of translation, offers a strong resemblance
to his contemporary, Purvey. "I beg each man who wishes to transcribe
this book of the gospels in the vulgar tongue, that he take care to preserve
the words literally as he finds them written down, and not to change them :
because little syllables and articles like Jo, la, lo propheta, la scriptura, and
such like words and syllables, — when they are put down or taken away,
do more to change the meaning than other people would believe. And
grammar alone is not sufficient for translation, but theology and exposition
of holy doctors are required, and therefore I tell you all this, that what has
been done may n9t be wasted. And because scripture speaks in many places
like the centre of a wheel ; and it is clear that there are words which should
be supplied to help the unlettered: so that others may not misunderstand,
and believe that the meaning of the text is changed when I supply or explain
any word which shall be necessary, and where it is understood, I underline
such words and sentences, so that it may be known which words are in the
text and which are not." Rom. xxiii. 408.

II] SAVONAROLA 47

with harsh accents, hke the Romans ; all others like the maritime
people, rustics, and dwellers in the Alps, coarsen them; the
Tuscans and Florentines perhaps least badly. Those who wish
to translate must not merely know grammar, but be experts in
theology and have knowledge of holy scriptures: they must
be rhetoricians and exercised in the vulgar tongue, and have
the spirit of holy devotion:

Otherwise they commit many faults, and many are already com-
mitted. And it is very necessary that they should be prohibited
from making any more translations into the vulgar tongue : and those
which are made should be corrected by those who have the wisdom
to do it welU.

As in other European countries, and in accordance with the
sentiments expressed by Passavanti, such biblical translations
as were in use in the fifteenth century were those incorporated
into devotional books, rather than used as separate works.
Versions of the penitential psalms are found, and a comparatively
large number of manuscripts of gospel harmonies — or lives of our
Lord^, — which in England, Spain and Germany were thought the
orthodox mediaeval form of the knowledge of the New Testa-
ment suitable for lay people; we have also four fifteenth century
plenaries, and a few single gospels or biblical books, laden with
glosses and paraphrases^. It is noticeable however that Savorfa-
rola, the Dominican reformer who set such great stress on
biblical study for the friars who followed him, who was such an
ardent biblical student himself, and who did all he could to en-
courage the study of the learned languages as an aid to biblical
interpretation, never advocated the use of biblical translations.
This, in a popular reformer who laid such great stress on the
popular adoptance of an apostolic life, and who died as late as
1498, would seem to shew that, like Gerson, Geiler von Kaysers-
berg, and Ximenes, he was unfavourable to them.

There is thus very little evidence, in spite of the absence of
prohibition by synod, that orthodox opinion even tolerated
biblical translations before the end of the fourteenth centurj^
or that it regarded them with favour from that time till the
invention of printing : though it is quite possible that vernacular

^ Trat. d. Scienza, 289. - Cf. pp, 1 48-54.

' Rom. XXIII. 412.

48 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

versions were occasionally found in convents of Dominican nuns
and friars in the fifteenth century.

§ 4. The Waldensian movement spread also from Toulouse
into the north of Spain : in which country first the Waldensians
were condemned to death by burning, where the first edict of the
civil power was passed against them, and where the prohibition
of lay Bible reading was maintained till the Reformation. The
Waldensians were banished from Aragon in 1194, and condemned
to death by burning in 1197. In 1233 James I of Aragon pre-
sided at the provincial synod of Tarragona^, assisted by the
archbishop and five bishops, and enacted twenty-six ordinances
for the support of the inquisition and the extirpation of heresy.
The first of the twenty-six was that :

No man shall possess books of the Old or New Testament in
Romance. And if any possess such, let him hand them over to the
episcopal seat to be burnt within eight days of the publication of this
constitution; and whosoever shall not do this, be he clerk or layman,
shall be held suspect of heresy, until he shall have purged himself.

The edict applied to the kingdom of Aragon: but it doubtless
guided the action of the inquisition throughout the peninsula.
It has been contended that this prohibition of vernacular Bible
reading was allowed to lapse "in about forty years^": but this
is exceedingly doubtful, from the later prohibitiofl"s and the
nature of the remaining Spanish translations. It is difficult to
believe that it did lapse, for in 13 17 the provincial synod of
Tarragona^ enacted that:

^ Martene, Vet. Mon. vii. 123, gives the date as 1233; Reusch misdates as
1276; cf. V, II. 1952. Probably both the synod of Trier, 1231, and this synod
of 1233 were local efforts to carry out the policy of the synod of Toulouse,
1229, under its impressive papal and local sanctions. For Romance, see
p. 34, n. I.

* Suggested in V, 11. 1952, 1956, but contradicted in Reusch, i. 43.
C. H. Lea, in Span. Inq. 1907, in. 528 (followed by Putnam, 11. 23),
thinks that ' ' from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century there was no
proscription of vernacular Bibles in Spain," but he appears to take this
from Villanueva's De la leccion de la sagrada 'J£,scritura, Valencia, 1791
(as he does the statement about Borrell's Bible, in. 52). This work was
written by a catholic anxious for a more liberal attitude to vernacular
scriptures in Spain at his own date, and anxious to shew that the pre-
Reformation Spanish Church was not hostile to them : but he quoted only
post-Reformation authorities, and was not specially well-informed about the
earlier period.

^ Mansi, xxv. 627-; cc. 11. and in.

II] SPANISH TRANSLATIONS 49

No Beguinus or Beguina shall hold, possess, or read theological
books in the vulgar tongue, except books which contain only prayers,
and we enjoin that those who have such books shall be compelled
by ecclesiastical censure to hand them over to the diocesan bishop.

These Begiiines, or lay people living under a rule, were at the
time suspected of heresy: but it was also enacted that those who
were actually Franciscan tertiaries "shall not have theological
books in the vulgar tongue." In the Empire and the Netherlands
at a later date, it was just this class of devout lay people, unable
to read the Latin scriptures, who were first allowed to use
vernacular plenaries^, or books of scripture: so that it is most
unlikely that ordinary lay people were at the date allowed to
use books prohibited to the privileged tertiaries.

Between the years 1317, however, and about 1470, there is no
direct reference to the use of vernacular Bibles by lay people in
Spain, and no prohibition. Although heresy of the Waldensian
type may have persisted to some extent in Aragon, the great
enemy of orthodoxy in Spain was always Judaism and Judaising
Christians: and there is no evidence that these used vernacular
versions of the Old Testament as a means of propaganda. The
Spanish Jews had such translations, and to a noticeably far
greater extent than the orthodox of Castile, as is explained later :
but they were apparently the property of the scholarly and the
wealthy, as was the case with biblical translations used by
Christian nobles of other countries at the time. Bibhcal trans-
lations were not therefore a source of anxiety to orthodox
Christians, anxious chiefly to combat Judaism: but there is no
evidence that orthodox lay people possessed biblical translations,
at this time, any more than in the other European countries.
The evidence from remaining manuscripts is quite the other
way: and there is no reference to the value of reading translations
of the scriptures in any Spanish manual of piety or instruction.
There is no evidence of prohibition for this period: but the
burden of proof for their use (by any except a very few princes
and nobles) lies on those who assert that they were thus used"-.

1 For meaning of plenary, see p. 39, n. 4.

2 Spanish monastic and other library catalogues are plentiful, but have
not been specially examined for mention of biblical translations: those
adduced in Gottheb, however, contain no such examples.

D.w. B. 4

50 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

There is a reference, however, to a prohibition of biblical

translations in Spain, with the special confirmation of pope

Paul II, by cardinal Pacheco, the most learned Spanish doctor

to attend the council of Trent. The historian of that council

^ says:

: Cardinal Pacheco noticed that among dangers to the sacred books

should be considered the custom of turning them into the common
•^, "^ national tongues, and communicating them thus translated to the

, " * ignorant people. To whom Cardinal Madrucci answered, urbanely
indeed but ardently, saying the Germans would be offended, where it
was accepted that the Fathers wished to deprive the people of the
sacred oracles, which, according to the apostle's warning, should never
depart from the lips of the faithful. And when Pacheco objected that
this had been interdicted in Spain with the special confirmation of
Paul II, Madrucci answered: "Paul II and any other Pope might be
deceived in judging what was profitable or not, but not so Paul the
apostle, in the passage alleged.. . ." But certainly the argument of
Madrucci is not fully satisfactory^.

Pacheco tried, we are told, at the council of Trent, to have
extended to the whole Church this statute of Ferdinand and
Isabella, which they had imposed on Spain on account of the
wicked Jews; but Madrucci opposed this successfully^.

Pacheco's assertion about the old statute is possibly correct,

for Paul II, who died in 1471, was much concerned to suppress

heresy in Spain, particularly of course that of the Judaisers.

' The earlier inquisition into heresy in Aragon had been carried

out by the royal power and the local bishops: but in 1451 the

1 Cone. Tridentini Hist., Pallavicino, S., 1717, lib. vi. p. 211, Pacheco,
11560, and Madrucci, t^S^i, are called by Pallavicino the most respected
doctors from Germany and Spain respectively, to attend the council of
Trent. The passage concludes : ' ' For certainly, while heretics were publishing
their false doctrines in the speech of the fatherland, it was needful to afford
some antidote to those streams by which the poison waS" spread : but it was
not therefore permissible that in that tempest all the parts of the Bible
should flow forth in the vulgar tongues to the people : for in them may be
found certain passages open in appearance, but profound in fact, which could
at first sight appear to favour heretics;. . .but this would not be likely to
happen with other rehgious books of a different kind." Passages from
Alphonso a Castro (see p. 51), who wrote c. 1539, and Pallavicino, who
wrote c. 1656, are quoted at length, not only for their evidence about the
edict of c. 1471, but to shew that Reformation and post-Reformation
cathohc historians did not regard the repugnance of the pre-Reformation
church to promiscuous Bible reading as a matter for apology or minimisa-
tion. See Staphylus, appendix, and p. 104 n. i.

* Harney's discussion of Pallavicino, 223.

Il] SPANISH PROHIBITIONS 51

king of Castile applied to Nicholas V for a delegation of the
papal inquisitorial power to punish heretics^. Nicholas V readily
appointed two inquisitors, with full powers to do all acts
necessary for the suppression of heresy, and since this included
the powers granted to the inquisitors at Toulouse, 1229, and
other synods, they had the power to enforce the prohibition of
vernacular scriptures, though there is no evidence that they were
specially concerned with them. This inquisition, dependent as
it was on a weak king, nev,er achieved much: but between 1451
and 1474 Fray Alonzo de Espina and others left no stone un-
turned to procure a fresh and more powerful establishment of
the inquisition. Paul II was pope between 1464 and 1471, and
was anxious for the establishment of an effective inquisition,
such as was actually accomplished by his successor: and though
we do not possess the prohibition of biblical translations con-
firmed by him, whose existence was asserted by Pacheco, it is
not impossible that the king of Castile did appl}^ for and receive
such confirmation, in connexion with the inquisition.

There is further evidence for a fresh royal prohibition of
vernacular scriptures in Castile, Leon and Aragon between 1479
and 1504, — the years between the marriage and death of
Isabella of Castile. It is noticeable that, just when orthodox
opinion in other countries was beginning to change, Ferdinand
and Isabella issued an edict, prohibiting under heavy penalties
the translation or possession of the sacred text. Alphonso a
Castro, the friar Minor who was confessor to Charles V, addressed
the council of Trent on the subject of vernacular scriptures, and
he pubhshed a work against heresy in 1539. In the latter he
states that^:

The third parent and origin of heresy is the translation of the sacred
books into the vernacular, when it often happens that they are read
by mankind without distinction of persons. .. .If therefore heresy
arises from a perverse understanding of the scriptures, what could
more incite to heresy than the reading by the common people of that
which they cannot in the least understand? For it is difficult to
believe that untaught people should understand what the most
learned of men can scarcely grasp by long study and daily examina-

1 Span. Inq. i. 147.

- Opeva A Iphonsi a Castro Zamorensi : A dversus omnes haereses, Paris, 1 5 7 1 ,
lib. I. c. 13, col. 80

4—2

52 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

tion.. . .Nolite sanctum dare canibus, etc. Wherefore most right and
praiseworthy was it, that there came the edict of the most illustrious
and catholic king of Spain, namely Ferdinand, and his wife Isabella,
which prohibited under the heaviest penalties anyone from translating
the sacred books into the vernacular, or on any pretext to keep such
a translation.. . .From this cause came the Waldensians. . .and from
the sanie reason sprang the Beghards, etc., all men untaught, and
quite ignorant of letters.

Ferdinand and Isabella were married in 1479, and were most
anxious to clear their kingdoms from all heretics, especially
Judaisers. They applied to Sixtus IV for permission to establish
an inquisition against heresy, with the fullest powers and the
special guarantee and protection of the crown. This royal in-
quisition was introduced into Castile in 1480, Catalonia i486,
and Aragon 1487, with papal license and approval: and the royal
edict mentioned by Alphonso a Castro was probably issued in
connexion with this establishment of the inquisition. It was
probably thought necessary to the completion of their powers,
as in the imperial edict of 1369^.

Whether or no there were any express confirmation of the
prohibition of vernacular Bible reading between the royal and
synodal edict of 1234, and the royal and papal edicts of c. 147 1-
1480, there is not a scrap of evidence that popular Bible reading
was ever practised by the faithful between those dates. The
edict of 1317 about tertiaries renders it improbable, as does the
special severity of the Spanish attitude towards such scriptures
at the Reformation and later; and the evidence from existent
manuscripts confirms this view 2.

The earliest evidence of the existence of vernacular Bibles in
Spain, the prohibition of 1233, probably refers to Catalan ver-
sions. The history of the earliest Spanish versions is obscure,
but the earliest existent manuscripts are founded on an ancient
Visigothic Latin text of the New Testament ^, which suggests a
connexion of origin with the early Waldensian-Provengal trans-
lations. The tradition that the earliest Spanish translations go

1 See p. 83

" For a short but valuable article on Spanish Bibles, see S. Berger in SH ;
also V, Catalanes [Versions'\, Espagnoles [Versions]: for the absolute pro-
hibition of the printing of vernacular Bibles by the Spanish Inquisition after
the council of Trent, V, 11. 1956, and Span. Inq. in. 528.

^ Les Bibles Castillanes, Berger, S. in Rom. xxviii. 398.

II] THE HISTORIA GENERAL 53

back to a complete Bible translated at the command of Alphonso
the Wise of Castile (125 2-1 286), is now shewn to be due to the
fact that Alphonso actually had the Historia Scholastica trans-
lated into CastiHan. This translation, "simply a historical work,
and in no sense a history of the Bible^," kept less closely to the
bibhcal text than the Bible Historiale in France: it was known
as the Historia General, was probably inspired by the making of
the French translation, and had a parallel history. Just as in
France the Anglo-Norman psalter and Apocalypse, and then
other partial biblical translations, were interpolated into the
manuscripts of the Bible Historiale, so in Spain partial trans-
lations were also interpolated: but they were no part of the
original work. The interpolations from the Old Testament seem
to have been of Jewish origin, for they are founded on the
Hebrew text: the oldest Spanish translation, in the Aragonese
dialect, has the Pentateuch and the psalter, translated by master
"Hermannus Allemannus," who actually lived 'in the reign of
Alphonso the Wise at Toledo, and made also Latin translations
of Aristotle from the Arabic 2. The interpolations from the New
Testament, founded on the Visigothic Latin text, date in existent
manuscripts from about 1300-1350: but may also go back to the
reign of Alphonso the Wise, and have been made under Walden-
sian influence. In any case, such translations as existed were in
the libraries of princes and nobles only, and were never used for
the popular instruction of the faithful. Thus there was in Spain,
from about 1284, a Spanish Historia General, several partial
translations of the Old Testament made by Jews from the
Hebrew =^, and a translation of the New Testament made from
the Visigothic Latin text. It says little for the encouragement of
translations by orthodoxy in Spain, that no translations were
made from the Vulgate at all. The earhest Spanish translation
of the Bible founded on the Vulgate was that provided by
cardinal Ouiroga for Philip II*.

1 Rom. 366. 2 III XXVIII. 390.

* See id. 360-408, and V, 11. 1954, where five anonymous translations of
the Jewish Old Testament are mentioned : another however was the O. Test,
prepared by the Rabbi Moses Arragel for the nobleman Luis de Guzman in
1422, the catholic glosses being added by a Franciscan.

* Mandonnet, in V, 11. 1469, states that the Dominican Jean I.opez trans-
lated the Sunday gospels into Castilian, c. 1490: butcomparett^. 11. 1956-

54 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

The Catalan versions were more plentiful, and probably go
back to the prohibited "Romance" versions of 1233, for the
earliest existent ones (fourteenth century) were connected in
origin with the Waldensian-Proven^al scriptures^. The Domini-
can Romeu de Sabruguera, who was provincial of Aragon 13 12-
1313, translated the psalter into Catalan, and has been supposed
to have translated the v/hole Bible: but this was probably a
mistake due to his production of a "rhymed Bible," extending
to the psalms and parts of the gospels of SS. Matthew and John^.
There is also an interesting reference to a translation of fthe Bible
by the Carthusian Boniface Ferrer, who was prior general of the
whole order from 1402 till his death in 1417. There is no im-
probability in a learned Carthusian's having translated some
part of the Bible ^ at the date, for use by religious and specially
nuns: but there is very great improbability in his having in-
tended it for general use by lay people. In an\' case, there are
no remaining manuscripts of such a translation, as might have
been expected. This version is further said to have been edited
and printed by the Dominican Jayme Borrell in 1477 at Valencia :
but of this edition also " no exemplar or bibliographical datum ^ "
remains. Apart from the insufficient evidence as to the existence
of this printed edition, the papal and royal prohibition of ver-
nacular Bibles c. 1471 is difficult to reconcile with such a fact^.

It is interesting to compare the attitude of authority in

* See Berger in SC, and for bibliography^ V, 11. 346.

* See C. Douais in V, 11. 346. This ascription of the psalter to Sabruguera
is interesting to compare with the edict of Bologna, 1242, forbidding Domi-
nicans to translate the holy scriptures, in the wider sense: and with the
prohibition of vernacular scriptures for tertiaries in 1317.

' Or, more probably, re-edited old translations, as was done in Italy in the
fifteenth century.

* Berger in SH. Cf. alsoV, 11. 1957, 196 1, where it is stated that the Fran-
ciscan Ambrose de Montesino edited in 151 2 the gospels and epistles for the
year: " but the prohibition existed already in fact at this epoch, as Francis
de Enzinas affirmed in 1543 in a preface to a Spanish version of the N. Test."
For this preface, see Appendix, infra : Enzinas states that for twenty years
past there has been sharp debate and quarrels about vernacular scriptures,
and men of much zeal have striven to prevent the printing of such books : in
Spain is prohibited what is with reason conceded to all other nations.

^ Though not impossible. The version may have been printed for the use
of rehgious, and children training to be religious, like the Cologne Bible of
1480 (see p. 121): and its issue may have occasioned the prohibition. But
the whole evidence for its existence is insufficient; copies of the Cologne
Bible remain : those of the Valencia Bible do not.

II] XIMENES LIFE OF CHRIST 55

England and in Spain with regard to the instruction of the laity
'in the scriptures, at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
England was troubled with Bible reading heretics, while in
Spain Waldensianism had nearly died out, and the enemies of
the faith were the Jews. Thus in England Arundel issued his
prohibition in 1408, and in 1409 confirmed the Carthusian Love's
Life of Christ for the reading of the faithful ; in Spain there was
reassertion of the old prohibitions, and the Carthusian Ferrer
perhaps did something in the way of biblical translation: but
the popular reading-book of the laity became, not this trans-
lation, but the Life of Christ, written in 1409 by the Franciscan
bishop of Perpignan, Francis Ximenes^. It was a parallel effort
of authority to supply the laity with a safe vernacular substitute
for the holy scriptures. Thus there is no evidence from existent
manuscripts to shew that the prohibition of vernacular Bibles
lapsed between 1233 and the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.
There are no cases of Spanish manuals recommending Bible
reading to the laity, and no cases of Spanish epistle and gospel
books being found in lay ownership, as occurs in Germany be-
tween 1500 and the Reformation. No doubt noblemen in some
cases had Spanish versions of the Historia Scholastica : but there
is no evidence that orthodox opinion in Spain was as far ad-
vanced even as in Germany in favour of the use of biblical
translations.

§ 5. The history of biblical translations and their prohibitions
presents pecuHar features in the Holy Roman Empire : but some
characteristics of the attitude of the mediaeval Church towards
them in France, Italy and Spain, where the movement for
popular Bible reading first spread, may now be noticed.

In regions unaffected by heresy, there was no formal opposition
to biblical translations as such; but their use, or rather their

^ See V, II. 2392. The subject of gospel harmonies, written from the time
of Tatian in Greek and Latin for the study of the learned, and from the time
of the Heliand in vernacular verse or prose, is very large, and has as yet
received little attention from modern critics. For Latin gospel harmonies
see V, II. 21 13. The Heliand was a hfe of Christ in the language of the
Germanic conquerors of Gaul in the ninth century (see Bibliom. 166): no
modern work has as yet been written on vernacular harmonies from this
date, but such a work would probably shew that they were relatively
popular for the instruction of lay people. For an early Waldensian example,
see p. 27, n. 4; for early Italian, Dutch, French and English ones. Index.

56 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

possession was in fact confined to a few kings and princes, or
doctors of the university.

But manuals of instruction, whether for the laity or for the
clergy, never refer to any religious duty of acquiring acquaint-
ance with the contents of the biblical books, either by personal
study or by listening to translations, until the last quarter of
the fifteenth century, — that is, until the spread of humanistic
ideas, and the multiplication of unlicensed printed vernacular
Bibles, had made such a course inevitable. When the masses of
the people were illiterate, and the libraries of even great princes
usually so small, it may seem obvious that manuals would not
recommend Bible study: but we sometimes meet with asser-
tions that the " mediaeval Church " encouraged a personal study
of the scriptures, even by means of vernacular versions, supported
perhapsby a solitary reference of very late fifteenth century date^.

On the other hand, the instruction of the laity was at least as
pressing a problem to the Roman Curia as to the Waldensian
heretics, and it would be false to imagine that it received no
attention at their hands. The expedient of using biblical trans-
lations was a very obvious one, and would have seemed par-
ticularly safe, for instance, in the instruction of the secular
clergy in the diocesan theology and grammar schools: and it is
impossible to imagine that it was never even considered. There
would have been no difficulty in issuing an approved translation
in the language of any country, if the general reading of the literal
text of the Bible by the laity had been regarded as desirable:
but there is not the slightest evidence that such a step was ever
taken.

It is nevertheless quite clear what steps were taken to meet the

: difficulty : they consisted of measures to obtain a better educated

clergy, who should be able to instruct their parishioners^: this is

obvious in the decrees of the fourth Lateran council of 1215^',

^ Cf. the generalisations by some of the authors of articles on vernacular
versions in Vigouroux; by cardinal Gasquet; by Janssen, in Hist, of the
German People at the Close of the Middle Ages, London, 1905, i. 23; by
F. Jostes, etc. Such writers seem not to realise all the documentary
evidence that exists for the mediaeval suspicion of lay Bible reading.

2 Innocent III had commented on the duty of the faithful not to despise
unlettered priests, in his letter to the faithful at Metz. See p. 31.

* Mansi, xxii. 979-.

II] EDUCATION OF PRIESTS 57

and the policy can be traced later. The decisions of that council
are very largelj^ concerned with heresy, — Waldensian, Catharan
and others, — and the means of dealing with it ; the action of the
inquisition was strengthened, and 3'early confession to the parish
priest was made obligatory, in order that he might be personally
responsible for the orthodoxy of his flock. But the chief curative
measures were those to secure better preaching and a better
educated clergy:

Among those things which pertain to the salvation of Christendom,
the food of the word of God is known to be chiefly necessary to it.
Wherefore, since it often happens that bishops, on account of their
manifold occupations. . .not to speak of lack of learning (which in
them is altogether shameful, nor for the future, to be tolerated), are
not sufficient by themselves to minister to the people the word of
God, . . . we ordain a general constitution that bishops are to maintain
and send out competent preachers, etc.^

Mention was also made of the clause of the third Lateran council
by which a competent benefice was to be set aside by each
cathedral chapter to maintain a schoolmaster, who should in-
struct gratuitously the clerks of that church, and also other poor
scholars: this clause however had not been observed (owing to
the difficulty of enforcing the setting aside of the benefice), and
the decrees now confirmed it, and added that it should apply to
other collegiate churches of sufficient means as well as cathedrals ;
and that both masters of grammar (Latin) and of theology
were to be maintained^. The enactment was not more successful
than its forerunner, and it was left to the Dominican order to
improve the level of clerical learning, by the teaching given in
their "studia generalia" and "studia particularia^": but the
decree indicates the end which was always aimed at by the
mediaeval Church in dealing with heresy, — the better education
of the clergy, and not the self-education of the laity through the
spread of vernacular versions of the Bible.

* Mansi, xxii. 998: cap. x.

2 Id. 999 : cap. xi.

^ See Crise Scol. 35-49.

CHAPTER III

The prohibition of vernacular Bible reading in the Holy
Roman Empire and the Netherlands, before 1400

§ I. More material exists for the study of the attitude of the
mediaeval Church to bibhcal translations^ within the mediaeval
Empire than in France, Italy or Spain, because contemporary
thought was there more exercised with the subject. It seems
likely that this was partly due to the weakness of the Emperor
as compared with other secular rulers, which led both to pro-
gressive thought within orthodox circles, and to the survival of
heresy without. One chronicler asserts that the heretics of the
Rhine district took advantage of the civil war between rival
claimants to the Empire; and possibly the relative prosperity
and independence of the German free towns fostered religious
societies of lay people, with their frequent mediaeval develop-
ment into heresy. In any case, the orthodox section of the
community which advocated the use of bibhcal translations took
its rise in Germany, gained toleration for its attitude earlier
there than elsewhere, and after 1500 was fairly strong. At that
date the use of such translations was practised within only very
limited circles in France, Spain, England and Italy. The for-
wardness of the Empire in this matter was due also to its com-
paratively early reception of the ideas of the Renaissance, and,
of course, the development of printing. In Italy the Renaissance
had been earlier still : but it had produced no religious movement
as it did in Germany, and particularly^ no religious movement
among laymen, such as might have led to a demand for biblical
translations. In Germany, on the other hand, the work done
by early Beguines and Franciscans had produced religious move-
ments among laj^men long before 1400. But, whatever the cause,
orthodox champions of vernacular scriptures arose earlier in
Germany than elsewhere.

^ Cf. T. M. Lindsay, Hist, of Ref. 1915, 11. 147-152 for some account of
pre-Reformation vernacular scriptures in Germany, and HH 11. 700-13.

CH. Ill] THE RHINE COUNTRY 59

A continuous demand for popular Bible reading was made by
different sects and religious movements in the same geographical
region, — the western border of the Empire, or upper and lower
Rhine country. The Waldensians about 1200 were strong in
Toul, Metz, Strassburg and Cologne, whence they spread into
the eastern portions of the Empire. The early orthodox Beguine
communities of the upper and lower Rhine became infected by
Waldensian and other heretical teaching, and were constantly
accused of heresy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The German mystics and Friends of God, — both orthodox and
comparatively favourable to vernacular Bibles, had their centres
in the towns of the upper Rhine, or the Oberland. The Brethren
of the Common Life, the outstanding mediaeval orthodox
champions of German devotional books, influenced both
Netherlands and Oberland: and finally, the earliest printed
vernacular Bibles came from the presses of the same towns.

In the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, much more
evidence is found for a demand for vernacular Bibles in this
region, than for one by particular classes or orders throughout
Europe. In Italy, Spain and Germany, there is some evidence
that Franciscan and Dominican convents possessed copies of
biblical translations between 1450 and 152 1, and that Fran-
ciscans, Dominicans or Carthusians took some little part in the
revision or publication of vernacular Bibles^: but the only early
champions of popular Bible reading shared in one or other of the
movements of this region, — that of the Friends of God or the
Brethren of the Common Life especially. Not the Empire as a
whole, whose rulers were probably no more friendly to trans-
lations than other kings, but the upper and lower Rhine country,
was the first district of Europe to obtain toleration for popular
Bible reading.

The struggle itself differed from that carried on in England by
the Lollards. On the continent, the demand was always for
"German scriptures" in the wider mediaeval sense, and not for
German Bibles: so that, while it was more successful than in
England, it had to contend partly for what in England was not

^ Cf. the Dominican Rellach, who intended to "publish" a German
translation before the invention of printing, c. 1459-61, seep. 117: but his
training and sphere of work were in the Oberland.

6o PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

denied, — the use of vernacufar books of devotion. It never
asked, as the Lollards did, for a complete translation of
the Bible, but only for that of its more "plain and open
parts." Again, it never asked for the encouragement of Bible
reading apart from the license of the confessor; and, down to
1450, there is very little evidence that it advocated a general
use of biblical translations at all, but only for convents of
wopen, or those lay people kijown as the Friends of God who
were under very close religious direction. The strength of the
movement in Germany, at the end of the fourteenth and early
fifteenth centuries, was this : that it contended for the encourage-
ment of the laity proper to use German books of edification and
sermons, the use of which was generally* not questioned in
England or France^.

§ 2. The Waldensians at Metz were subjected to other
attacks in 1207-8 2, and, probably in consequence, dispersed
eastward into the Empire, particularly into Cologne and Strass-
burg. They had been found at Liege, the centre of the preaching
of the founder of the Beguines, in 1203 : they were at Strassburg
in 121 1, and eighty of them were burned in that year. Nothing
is said of the translations used in the brief notices of their
existence at Cologne and Strassburg, while we know that the
Romance versions confiscated at Metz were in the French dialect
of Lorraine.

The earliest record of the use of German translations by the
Waldensians comes from a chronicler of Trier in the year 1231.
Franciscan and Dominican friars had been working in Germany
against the heretics since 1225^, but in 1231 Gregory IX* again
sent legates to carry on the work of Guido of Praeneste and
the three Cistercian abbots. The chief of these legates was
the Dominican, Conrad of Marburg, the celebrated confessor of
S. Elizabeth of Hungary, and through his energy three years of
persecution followed, as a chronicle of Trier relates^. The arch-
bishop of Trier held a synod for the suppression of the Walden-
sian heretics in 1231; three heretics were presented at it, and

^ For the controversy over the translation of S. Bernard's sermons at an
earher date, see Chaive Fran. 237.

2 Awn. Trevir. 11. 106. * Id. 11. 121. * Id. 11. 127.

' Prodromus Historiae Trevirensis, Hontheim, Augsburg, 1757, n. 796;
= Gesta Trevir. c 103; cf. Mansi, Supp. 2, 977.

Ill] SYNOD OF TRIER 6l

one was burnt. The acts of the synod have perished: but it was
a reflex of the synod of Toulouse in 1229, assembled similarly
for the suppression of Bible reading heretics and the strengthen-
ing of the inquisition, so that the passage of some prohibition of
German scriptures at it is very probable. In Spain the synod o^
Tarragona, 1233, was a similar reflex of that of Toulouse, and
its prohibition of vernacular scriptures was stringent^. At any
rate, the confiscation of German Bibles by inquisitors followed
immediately. "In the year 1231," said another chronicler,
"three schools of heretics were taken in the city of Trier. And
there were many who belonged to these sects, and many of
them were instructed in holy scripture which they used trans-
lated into German 2." The evidence of contemporary and later
inquisitors shews that these German scriptures were as much
prohibited in Germany as in France and Spain, and the prob-
ability is that the prohibition dated from the synod of Trier,
1231 ; though it may have rested only on the general conferment
on the inquisitors of the powers granted them at Toulouse, 1229^.
An anonymous inquisitor of Passau* wrote a tract on heresy^
about 1260, and spoke from intimate knowledge of the heretics:
he had been frequently present at their examination, and he
reckoned that in the diocese of Passau alone there were forty-one
"schools " or conventicles of heretics; some towns had more than
one, but he mentions thirty-four towns or villages which
possessed at least one. He gives most details about his own
diocese of Passau, but mentions the number and power of the
\\' aldensians elsewhere :

In all the towns of Lombardy and Provence, and in other kingdoms
and countries, there were more schools of heretics than of theolo-
gians, and many hearers. And they used to hold public disputations
and summon the people to hear them in courts ; and they preached in
the fields and in houses, and there was none who dared to hinder
them, on account of the power and number of those who supported
them.

He explains the six causes of heresy ; the third is that they have
translated the New and Old Testament into the vulgar tongue,
and this they teach and learn :

^ See p. 48. 2 Mansi, xxiii. 241. ^ gee p. 37

^ Formerly known as Reiner the Dominican, cf. Preger, 7, on his identity

6 MBVP, XIII. 298.

62 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

For I have heard and seen a certain unlettered countryman who
used to recite Job word for word, and many others who knew the
whole New Testament perfectly i.

The second is the heretic's diligence in teaching and learning
these biblical translations :

All, men and women, cease not to teach and learn, night and day.
The workman, who toils by day, learns or teaches at night. . . .They
teach and learn without books,. . .and even in leper-houses.. . .To
those who excuse themselves, saying that thej^ cannot learn, they say:
" Learn only one word a day, and in a year's time you will learn three
hundred, and thus you will grow proficient." What I say is true.

The fifth cause is their insufficient doctrine; for they hold as
fables whatever a doctor of the Church teaches which cannot be
proved by the text of the New Testament, contrary to the
teaching of the Church. After the discourse on these causes of
heresy, he gives a list of questions for the help of his fellow in-
quisitors in the examination of heretics, and it is significant that
the first and primary question is whether the suspected heretic
has ever heard or learned the words of the German gospels, etc. :

First, if he has learned any holy words, and when he began to learn,
and from whom? Has he ever taught them to lay people-?

This inquisitor's experience and recommendations shew that un-
doubtedly these translations existed, though condemned, in
south Germany, in the period between 1231 and 1260.

1 MBVP, XIII. 299; of. 300. "They say also that Latin prayers do lay
people no good. . . . Also that what is not proved by the text of the Bible is
fabulous. They say too that holy scripture has the same effect in the vulgar
tongue as in Latin, wherefore they consecrate in the vulgar tongue, and ad-
minister the sacraments. Also, they know the text of the New Testament and
a great part of the Old, by heart, in the vulgar tongue : and they despise the
Decretals and the Decrees and the sayings and expositions of the saints, and
adhere only to the bibhcal text. And they refuse to acknowledge the
mystical sense of holy scripture," etc.

^ Id. 308. This inquisitor is the only writer, as far as I am aware, who
questions the accuracy of the Waldensian translations. He does not accuse
them of perversion, but only of textual blunders arising through ignorance.
His tract is in Latin, but he particularises the German words of the transla-
tion which are blunders: and says that the heretics even confuse sui and
sues (i.e. porci), in the text In propria venit et sui euni non receperunt
(John, i. 11), a confusion actually found also in another French translation.
The modern assertion that the prohibitions of Waldensian scriptures were
due only to their wilful mistranslations is not justified: it is not mentioned
by contemporaries. The dependence of particular doctrines on particular
texts and their translation only became a matter of controversy in the
sixteenth century. Cf. supra p. 30, n. i.

Ill] DAVID OF AUGSBURG 63

The writings 'of the Minorite, David of Augsburg, are also
evidence for the work of the inquisition in Germany against the
Waldensians, or the "pauperes de Lugduno." He belonged to
the south German Minorite province, was the pupil of Berthold
of Regensburg, and acted as inquisitor for some years: he died
in 1272^. The burning of German heretics had begun again in
1265, and the inquisition was active in Austria and Bavaria
between 1250 and 1270. Da\ad says that the early followers of
Peter Waldo began, though laj'men, to preach the gospel;

And because thev presumed to interpret the words of the gospel
in a sense of their own, not perceiving that there were any others,
they said that the gospel ought to be obeyed altogether according
to the letter : and they boasted that they wished to do this, and that
they only were the true imitators of Christ. . . . This was their first
heresy, ccmtempt of the power of the Church^. . . .They give all their
zeal to lead many others astray with them : they teach even little girls
the words of the gospels and epistles, so that they may be trained in
error from their childhood^. . . . They do not receive the Old Testament
as of faith, but they learn only certain passages from it, in order to
attack us and defend themselves, saying that, when the gospel came,
all the old things passed away. And similarly they pick out the words
of SS. Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, Ambrose, John Chrysostom,
Isidore, and short passages from their books, in order to prove their
illusions and to resist us. And they very easily lead simple people
astray, b}^ dressing up their sacrilegious doctrine with fair passages
from the saints; but they pass over in silence those passages of the
saints which seem to contradict them, and by which their error is
refuted. They teach their docile and fluent disciples to repeat the
words of the gospels and the savings of the apostles and other saints
by heart, in the vulgar tongue, so that they may know how to teach
others and lead the faithful astray. . . . All their boasting is about their
singularity; for they seem to be more learned than other men, be-
cause they have learnt to say by heart certain words of the gospels
and epistles in the vulgar tongue. For this reason they esteem them-
selves superior to our people, and not only to lay people, but even to
literate people; for they are fools, and do not understand that a school
boy of twelve years old often knows more than a heretical teacher of
seventy : for the latter knows only what he has learnt by heart, while
the former, having learnt the art of grammar, can read a thousand
Latin books, and to some extent understand their literal meaning*.

^ Cf. Preger, 8, who prints the complete form of the tract, which is given
incompletely in Martene, Thes. v. 1777-.

^ Preger, 26. ^ Id. 33.

* Id. 29. For a discussion of this evidence see Die deutsche Bibeliiber.
18-.

64 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

Both inquisitors thus agree that the use of biblical translations
was the mainspring, in Germany as in France, Italy and Spain,
of the Waldensian heres}^ : while the whole tenor of their evidence,
and especially the circumstance that the first question to be put
to a heretic by the inquisition was, whether he knew any biblical
words b}' heart, shews that the use or knowledge of such trans-
lations was prohibited. That Waldensian heretics used German
translations of the New Testament and parts of the Old from
1231, and throughout the thirteenth century, is also beyond
dispute.

§ 3. The origin of the existent manuscripts of the old German
translation of the New Testament, and part of the Old, is much
disputed; a great deal of controversial literature on the subject
has appeared in pamphlets and periodicals in Germany from
1885 onwards^. It is certain at any rate that all the early
German printed Bibles follow a text derived, as regards the
New Testament and part of the Old, from a group of late
fourteenth century manuscripts, and that this text is followed
in the majority of the manuscript plenaries, or collections of
the epistles and gospels, with glosses. There was, that is to
say, a German translation of the New Testament at least, which
was sufficiently widely known to be copied in all the plenaries
and early printed Bibles, and to be translated into Low Dutch.
The oldest and most remarkable manuscripts of this translation
are those at Wolfenbiittel, Freiberg and Tepl^ all written
shortly before or after 1400, the oldest being the New Testament
which belongs to the cloister of Tepl in Bohemia^. Controversy
has raged as to whether the prototype of the manuscript was the
work of an orthodox or a Waldensian translator: possession of
the translation in other manuscripts can be traced to both

^ There is a good bibliography at the end of Allemandes {Versions] in
V. See especially Keller; the above quoted works of H. Haupt contending
for a Waldensian origin; and F. Jostes' Die Waldenser und die vorlutherische
Bibeliibersetzung, Munster, 1885; Haupt, Walden. Ursprung des Codex Tep-
lensis, Wiirzburg, 1886; and W. Walthers' Die Deutsche Bibeliibersetzung
des Mittelalters, Brunswick, 1889, as leaving the question undecided.

2 Cf. W. Walther, HJ, xii. 687; and F. Jostes in HJ, xv. 771-, xvin.
136.

' Grundriss derGermanischen Philologie, Paul, H., Strassburg, 1901-9,11. i.
p. 354. Though this is the oldest complete New Testament, the same trans-
lation is found in older plenaries: cf. MSS. 532, 4878, 66, 157, 58 at Munich,
cited by Haupt, Walden. Urs. 26.

Ill] THE TEPL GERMAN NEW TESTAMENT 65

Waldensians and orthodox, and so has little significance as to
origin. It seems probable that the actual Tepl manuscript was
copied by an orthodox scribe, since it has directions to shew
which parts of the gospels correspond to the special gospels for
the three masses for Christmas Day^ It is true that from the
earliest times Waldensians used the Sunday and saints' day
gospels in translations 2, perhaps more even than the continuous
text of the New Testament; but between 1380-1400 it is more
likely that this use indicated an orthodox owner. It is also likely
that the manuscript was copied in a monastery: not merely on
the grounds that it is written in several hands ^, which might even
more easily prove that it was copied for a university stationer
or bookseller than in a monastic scriptorium, but because, at the
date, orthodox opinion was beginning to allow the use of biblical
translations in German monasteries, more readily than to lay
people*. The real question, however, is as to the origin of its
prototype; for, when hnguistic knowledge was so slight, and
translations never bore their authors' names, there is no difficulty
whatever in supposing that an orthodox scribe copied a text
which 150 years earlier had been Waldensian in origin, or vice
versa. The first Waldensians incorporated the old Norman psalter
in the book of translations they presented at the third Lateran
council 5; the fifteenth century Dominicans in Italy certainly
used the old Waldensian translations : there was not, before the
Reformation, any question as to the orthodoxy of the contents
of particular translations, only as to the propriety of their
existence^. Two points, however, stand out in connexion with
the original of the Tepl manuscript:

i. The earliest Waldensian (Provencal) translations were made
anterior to the issue and general acceptance of the famous Paris
revision of the Vulgate, of the thirteenth century. The earliest
existent Waldensian texts, Provencal, Catalan and Italian, were
founded on a Latin Bible, the use of which prevailed widely
in the Visigothic kingdom of Narbonne, up to the thirteenth

1 Tepler Bibel. 40; Walden. Urs. 15; Keller, c. iii.

2 See p. 34. 3 Jostes, Die Waldenser, 8.

* See pp. log, 121. * See pp. 27-8.

* Keller's endeavours to read heretical meanings into the German trans-
lation at Tepl shews a lack of historical perspective: see Keller, 83-.

D.W. B. c

66 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

century, but was afterwards completely superseded by the Paris
Vulgate^. It is characterised by a set of peculiar readings,
amounting to over thirty, in the Acts of the Apostles, and these
readings appear, as S. Berger pointed out, in the early Provencal,
Catalan and Italian Bibles. They appear also in the Tepl manu-
script: and S. Berger, whose authority is very high, gave it as
his opinion that the prototype of the Tepl manuscript was trans-
lated from such a Latin version, or even from a very early
Provengal version ^i he therefore concluded that the Tepl manu-
script was of Waldensian origin ^. This remains the chief positive
argument for such an origin ; for, although scholars can parallel
particular variant readings from other manuscripts, their num-
ber and coincidence with the Visigothic Vulgate has not been
satisfactorily explained by any theor}' save that of S. Berger*.
The question is not ; Is it more probable that an orthodox or a
heretical translator made the German translation shortly before
1400? but. Is it more probable that a Waldensian or an orthodox
person made its prototype, since he used as his basis a particular
Latin version which was not in use much after 1200, or the
Provengal translation founded on it? The absence of record of
the making of an orthodox translation at the date, and the cer-
tain knowledge that the greater part of the New Testament then

1 Walden. Urs. 30-.

2 Earlier than existent manuscripts: cf. Walther, 191.

3 Walden. Urs. 31. S. Berger in Revtte Historique, xxx. i. 1886, p. 168,
traced the textual resemblances between the Tepl MS., particulariy the
Acts, and earUer Waldensian (Proven9al) texts, and concluded: "From so
many resemblances, none of which by itself would suffice to estabhsh a
certainty, but the accumulation of which leaves scarcely room for doubt,
we must conclude that according to all probability . . . this, the most impor-
tant German Bible of the middle ages, appears to have been translated in
part, by the efforts of the Waldensians, from an original written in one of
the Proven9al dialects."

* Walther, in his long and laborious work on the mediaeval German Bible,
agrees that the original of the Tepl MS. was much older than the Tepl MS.
itself, and that the Tepl manuscript has remarkable resemblances to the
Romance translations. He is unwilling however to accept S. Berger's con-
clusion (see p. 191), though his alternative theories are unconvincing, and
unaccompanied by evidence. "Why," he asks, "if there is some resemblance
between the French and German versions, should the French not have
corrected theirs from the German? Or why should not either of them, in
preparing a Romance or German version, have used an already existent
catholic version? " We have, however, excellent historical evidence as to how
the earliest Proven9al translations were prepared, cf. Etienne de Bourbon
in Anec. Hist. 291, and pp. 26-7 of this book.

Ill] ORIGIN OF TEPL MS. 67

existed in Waldensian translations, makes the theory of a
Waldensian origin at least probable. The argument, that a
Waldensian translation would not have been used by the
orthodox 150 years later, certainly has no strength. In any
case, the strongest argument for the antiquity of origin of the
original of the Tepl manuscript, is S. Berger's verdict on its
Latin source.

ii. Controversy has also raged as to the nature of the tracts
which accompany the biblical translations in the Tepl manu-
script, and which have been claimed to prove, not merely a
Waldensian original, but even Waldensian possession of the
manuscript itself. The Latin tracts are patristic and incon-
clusive: they may or may not have been copied from the same
manuscript as the translation, and in any case both Waldensians
and orthodox used patristic literature in support of their doc-
trine^. The other two tracts are curious. They are in German,
which says something for an early association with the ancestors
of the Tepl translation, and they consist of a list of the seven
sacraments and the seven articles of the faith, both with short
expositions'^. That on the seven sacraments may have been
originally orthodox or Waldensian, since many Waldensians
acknowledged the seven sacraments, and some accepted them
at the hands of orthodox priests: arguments from the order of
the sacraments in the tract are inconclusive, for it is very
doubtful whether there was a recognised order either among
Waldensians or orthodox at the date. The tract on the articles
of the faith, however, has a very marked verbal resemblance to
those demanded from Waldensian ordinands, as contained in an
early manuscript : the seven articles in both are indistinguishable
in orthodoxy from the catholic seven articles, but the verbal
resemblance is much closer than between the Tepl articles and
any other orthodox catechism or articles with which contro-
versialists have compared them^. The signiiicant feature how-
ever is the date of origin to which the number of the articles
point. The division of the creed into articles or clauses was

1 Cf. Jostes, Die Waldenser, 9-; Walden. Urs. 1-9; for Waldensians and
patristic literature, David of Augsburg, in Preger, 29, etc.
^ Jostes, Die Waldenser, 10-; Walden. Urs. 9-18.
^ Id. 11-13.

5—2

68 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

primitive^ and arbitrary: the division into seven, or the doubled
number, fourteen, had no particular relation to the structure of
the creed, but was an arbitrary summary of its contents under
the number denoting perfection: the whole creed was divided
into seven, or seven clauses were assigned to both the godhead
and the humanity. The division into seven goes back at least
to the third century, and it is hkely that it was superseded by
the division into fourteen in the thirteenth, or early fourteenth
century. English manuals and catechisms in the fourteenth
century certainly teach twelve or fourteen articles of the faith^:
and it is probable that this was the continental custom. The
synod of Var in 1368 set forth fourteen articles of the faith for
the instruction and guidance of parish priests of little learning^,
as do the majority of fourteenth century manuals and catechisms.
It is thus certain that the division of the creed into seven articles
goes back to a period anterior to the fourteenth century, and
probable that it was only used in the fourteenth century as a
verbal and traditional rendering of an older form: it had been
generally superseded by the fourteen articles. This would seem
to shew a very early origin for the Tepl tract, quite possibly at
about the date of the original translations themselves, and it
strengthens the argument for the antiquity of those translations.
Thus the Latin source of the earliest German biblical transla-
tions, and the antiquity, and probably Waldensian nature, of a
tract accompanying the Tepl version, both point towards the
early thirteenth century as the date of the first German trans-
lations ; a date at which the historical evidence is much stronger
in favour of a Waldensian than an orthodox origin.

§ 4. The Rhine valley and Rhine mouth seem from the
twelfth century onv.^ard to have been the scene of religious
movements among laymen, of the association of lay people in
communities for the purpose of leading a devout life, and,
(closely connected with this), of the tendency of such communi-
ties to deviate into heresy, through the "mediocre learning," as

^ The creed of Origen at Alexandria, a.d. 230, and the creed used at the
baptism of Palmatius, Rome, c. a.d. 220, were both divided into seven
clauses.

2 See pp. 196-9. I have not found a manual or catechism of the date which
divides the creed into seven articles.

' Mansi, xxvi. 486.

Ill] LAMBERT LE BEGUE 69

their enemies said, of the local leaders of the movements. While
Peter Waldo was getting the gospels translated for himself at
Lyons, Lambert le Begue (the Stammerer) was preaching in
the Netherlands. Gilles d'Orval, a religious of Liege, the town
where Lambert himself preached, wrote in 1251 a chronicle of
the city; he says that Lambert, the founder of the Beghards,
"although he was but little instructed in the studj^ of letters,"
was a celebrated preacher at Liege, c. 1 167-91: he incurred,
however, the displeasure of the bishop, and when he was im-
prisoned in the castle of Rivogne in consequence, " and had been
kept some little time in captivity, he translated the Acts of the
Apostles into French^." Another chronicler states "he was a
fervent preacher of the new devotion which filled Liege and the
neighbouring regions," — a phrase curiously reminiscent of the
contemporary description of the Brethren of the Common Life
as the "founders of the new devotion." Lambert translated
many books, especially the lives of the saints and the Acts of
the Apostles 2; the Acts and a life of our Lady were probably
in verse ^. His career as a popular preacher, founder of com-
munities and translator of scriptures, bears remarkable re-
semblance to that of Gerard Groot (or, the Great), the founder
of the Brethren of the Common Life. Though orthodox himself,
the resemblances in his story with that of the early Lollards is
also curious, while it is certain that the name Lollard was
copied from that applied to the Beghards*, or followers of
Lambert, early in the fourteenth century. Beghard, or the
Latin, Beguinus, was derived from Lambert's own surname:

^ Mon. Germ., Scrip, xxv. 12: lib. iii. § 43; and Berger, 49.

- Mon. Germ., Scrip, xxiii. 855.

' Inq. Neer. 11. 365, 25.

^ The English word beggar is probably derived through O.F. begard from
the Flemish beggacrt, a follower of Lambert le Bdgue; the form beggaert
being derived either directly from B^gue with the masc. ending ard, hard,
or from the Latinised Beguinus, with ard. The earliest English example is
beggares, in the Ancren Riwle of 1225, and the word beg means always,
to ask alms, (not, to be a lay preacher). There is no Flemish word beg, to
ask alms. See NED. Grosseteste, '\i'26^, knew of these lay preachers: he
told the Franciscan William of Nottingham that " there was a higher degree
of poverty than mendicancy, namely to live of one's own labour; hence, he
said that the Beguines are of the most perfect and hoi}' religion, (religious
order), because they live of their own labour and do not burden the world
with exactions." {Eng. Franc. Hist. 87.) The Wvcliffites were great students
of Grosseteste.

70 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

Lollard, from a Flemish word meaning to "mumble" or
"mutteri."

Beghard, Beguinus or Beguina had at first no opprobrious
significance, but in 1209, and from then onwards, the Beghards
received various ecclesiastical condemnations. This was due
partly to the looseness of their organisation and wandering life,
partly to suspicion of contamination by heretical pravity. The
Waldensian heretics had in fact come to Lambert's own city of
Liege in 1203 2, and the similarity of their life of lay piety to that
of the Beghards probably led to a mutual influence upon each
other. But the term Lollard, which had always a heretical
impHcation, was not apphed to the Beghards till the beginning
of the fourteenth century, when they had fallen seriously into
disrepute. "Lollard" was applied to Wychffe's followers and
poor priests from the resemblance of their wandering life, and
doubtful orthodoxy, to those of the Beghards or Lollards of the
Netherlands (one of whom had been burned, as a " Lollard," as
early as 1322), and whose existence as a band of "wandering and
hypocritical fellows^" had been noticed in Brabant as early as
1309. These societies of devout lay people, living without
monastic rule, were disliked by the regular religious, not onl};'
on account of their dubious orthodox}^ but as rival associa-
tions :

And thus they are plainly wont to say : if this man or woman desire
to remain a virgin, why does he or she not enter our religion? What
is such a person doing in the world ? Why does he or she not fly to the
cloisters of nvms or monks from the midst of Babjdon^?

^ Lollen or lullen, see NED; Gieseler, iv. 159; and in Anec. Hist. 307,
the Waldensians "learn the gospels by heart in the vernacular and mumble
the one to the other." This meaning of Lollard, — a heretical Flemish lay
preacher, — was undoubtedly that implied by the Irish Cistercian monk,
Henry Crump, who caused a disturbance in 1382 by calling the Wyclififites
"Lollards," in a sermon preached in the church of S. Mary the Virgin
(FZ 311). But ecclesiastics connected the derivation with lolium, the tares
sown among the wheat; and the populace, and even Wycliffites themselves,
with the ME loll (lounge, sprawl). Cf. the Wycliffite preacher who said "the
most blessed Loller" was Christ Himself, "lolled between two thieves"
(p. 274), and the examples in NED.

- SH, Waldo.

^ Hypocritae gyrovagae, Gieseler, iv. 159.

* Id. n. 2. For those in Italy, n. 3; in France, in 132 1, Lib. Sent. Thol. 298;
and for the Dominican prohibition of biblical translations made by the friars
for houses of nuns or Beguines in 1242, supra p. 37; those in Spain, p. 49.

Ill] BEGHARDS AND WALDENSIANS 71

So strong was this feeling, that the term " Beguines" was applied
even to Franciscan and Dominican tertiaries, not only of the
Rhine country, but in France, Spain and Italy^.

As associations of devout but unlettered lay people, the
Beghards and Beguines were a class to whom vernacular scrip-
tures would have been specially useful, and there is evidence
that vernacular books were popular among them. They were
infected with Waldensianism at an early period, very shortly
after Lambert's own death; and there are some indications that
among the vernacular books they used were translations of the
canonical scriptures.

A bishop of Doornik in the late twelfth century issued an
ordinance, commanding all parish priests to proclaim as heretics
publicly and frequently at mass, all those who, among other
crimes, "translate the psalter^." In 1310 the archbishop of
Trier condemned the Beguines because "they feign themselves
to the unlearned to be expounders of holy scripture 3." In that
same year a very learned Dutch Beguine, Margaret Porete, was
condemned and burned at Paris : she had held heretical tenets,
and made a translation of holy scripture^.

Some Beguines also were infected with the heresies of the
Brethren of the Free Spirit, and the Fraticelh, and studied the
books of Peter John Ohvi, and especially his exposition of the
Apocalypse, in the vernacular, as the inquisitor of Toulouse
frequently ascertained; later Beghards studied other heretical
and semi-heretical books in the vernacular^. The Beguine
movement, though influenced both by the German mystics and
by the Brethren of the Common Life, nevertheless remained
a parallel movement down to the beginning of the fifteenth
century.

There are other evidences that early Dutch translations of
the Bible were received with hostility by the hierarchy, besides
Lambert's Acts of the Apostles, composed in prison. In 1271
Jakob van Maerlant, a Dutch poet and layman, translated, —
not the Bible itself, but — Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica

1 Lib. Sent. Thol. 299, 300, 313, 316, 318, 325.

2 Inq. Neer. 1. 149.
^ Id. I. 155.

* Id. II. 64. * See p. 82.

72 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

into Dutch verse ^. This work was later translated by clerks into
French and German for royal or noble students, without exciting
opposition: but Maerlant was himself a layman, and seems to
have intended his translation, — a very free one, — for popular
use. He complained in a later poem that there was far greater
eagerness to read tales of Tristram and Lancelot, Perceval and
Galahad than the gospel, "which is too hard for us, because it
is so true and righteous: and mark now a clear and certain
token, — he who would so gladly hear it, for him it ma}^ easity be
deemed unfitting-." Maerlant incurred ecclesiastical censure of
some sort for his translation of the Rijmbijbel, and the tradition
of this was sufficiently widely spread to be known to an English
writer of the fourteenth century. Maerlant himself mentions it
in a subsequent translation of the Speculum Historiale, in which
he omitted to translate the biblical portions, either because he
had already translated them, or a large part of them, in the
Rijmbijbel, or (as he himself hints), because such translations
were unacceptable to ecclesiastics. He says in the Spiegel
Historiael, i. 3, that he will give only the main facts of his
original, omitting the theological portions and learned dis-
cussions,

because they are too hard for the lay people: and also I am afraid
about it, that the papacy might take it amiss, if I should wish to
undertake this. And I have been subjected to attacks from this
source, because I have made known to the lay people secret things
out of the Bible^.

1 Rijmbijbel, ed. David, J., Brussels, 1858-9; cf. Jonckbloet, i. 228-.
Maerlant' s poem, Die Clausule van der Bible, is only a hymn to, or life of,
our Lady. For the view that opposition to the Rijmbijbel was due only to its
lay authorship, see Hellwald 115; Hist, of Flemish Literature, Delepierre,
London, i86o, 39.

^ Truffe van minnen ende van stride

Leest men dar de werelt wide;

Die ewangelie es ons te zwaer,

Om dat soe recht seit ende waer.

Merct een tekin harde clare:

Wie so gherne horen tware,

Hem mach lichte niet gescien.

Men sabre noch duegt an zien.
Leven van Sint Franciscus, Tideman, J., Leyden, 1847; Werken uitgegeven
door de Vereeniging ter bevordering der oude Nederlandsche Letterkunde, Vierde
Jahrgang, Derde aflevering; p. 4.

^ want den leeken eist te swaer;

ende occ mede hebbic vaer.

Ill] maerlant's rijmbijbel 73

Maerlant's pupil, Jan de Weert, himself a layman, mentions the
opposition his master had incurred, in his Disputation between
Jan and Roger ^■.

Because he unbound the Bible into Dutch:

And because he exposed himself for his poem's sake:

For this they were wroth.

The matter is referred to in the tract in favour of biblical
translations, written in England at the end of the fourteenth
century, probabty b}' John Purvey:

It was heard of a worthy man of Almain, that some time a Fleming,
(his name was Jacob Merland), translated all the Bible into Flemish.
For which deed he was summoned before the pope of great enmity:
and the book was taken to examination and truly approved. It was
delivered to him again, in confusion to his enemies^.

It is thus certain that some sort of storm was raised against
Maerlant by the publication of the Rijmbijbel, no doubt by the
local ecclesiastics. In his earlier and famous poem, the Wapene
Martijn^, he had lamented over the decadence of the world in
his day, and specially over the evil condition of the Church, and
the ignorance and idle lives of the clergy. These were naturally
hostile to him afterwards: Maerlant said, in his preface to the

dat des dat paepscap belgen soude,

of ic mi dies onderwinden woude.

Ende anderwaerven ebbic gewesen

in haer begripen van desen,

want ik leeken weten dede

uter byblen die heimlichede.
Quoted Tepler Bibel. 36; printed in Spiegel historiael, Amsterdam, 1849;
cf. Jonckbloet, i. 229.

' As quoted by Jostes, 36:

Want die Bibele hi in Dietsche ontbant,

Ende voor sijn dicht thooft hi boot,

Voor dies hadde toren.
With slight variations in Denkniciler altniederlandischer Sprache und Littera-
tur, Kausler, E., Leipzig, 1866, in. 16; and in Jonckbloet, i. 229. Jan de
Weert lived at Ypres, was a doctor of medicine, and died about 1362. He
was a great admirer of Maerlant, and also a translator: his chief work was
the translation of the Speculum Peccatorum into Dutch, as the Nieuwe
Doctrinael of Spiegel der Sonde, c. 1351. For his other works, cf. Biogra-
phisch Woordenboek der Nederlanden, Van der Aa, Haarlem, 1877, xx. 96.
- Printed in Appendix.

^ Jacob van Maerlant's Strophische Gedichte, Verwijs, E., Groningen, 1879,
XI-; cf. Maerlant's Werken beschoud. als Spiegel van de dertiende Eeuw,
Jan te Winkel, Ghent, 1892, 68; 183-200. For Maerlant's laments about the
clergy of his day, cf. also his Der Kerken Claghe, in the Strophische Gedichte.

74 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

Rijmbijbel, that he had enemies who were ever ready to attack
himi. It is significant also that for years after the pubHcation
of the Rijmbijbel in 1271 nothing appeared from Maerlant's pen,
though both before and after these years his output was large
•and regular. It is quite possible that his enemies appealed to the
Curia about the matter, for appeals to Rome in the thirteenth
century were regular, and often occasioned by quite minor
matters. Maerlant may have actually travelled to Rome, or
authority to deal with the matter may have been sent to the
local bishop of Utrecht, John of Nassau. Maerlant's reference
to the "papacy" in his Spiegel Historiael is, moreover, precise,
and would scarcely have been used if no appeal to Rome had
been made at all. If he actually travelled to Rome to defend his
Rijmbijbel, and obtained an assurance that it was harmless,
coupled with a warning not to meddle with high matters in the
future, both his own words in the Spiegel and Purvey's form of
the tradition would be easily understood. The Curia was less
ready to condemn translations than the local bishops, the Rijm-
bijbel was after all only a translation of the Historia Scholasiica,
and the authorities at Rome had not been annoyed, like those
at Utrecht, by the popularity of the Wapene Martijn.

Nearly a hundred years later, another la^'m.an undertook the
work of translating the Historia Scholasiica into prose, in 1358 -.
His preface shews that, at the date, the majority of the clergy
still regarded Innocent Ill's letter and the synodal decisions as
prohibiting biblical translations. The author states his intention
of translating the Bible for popular edification :

And yet I know well that it shall be much begrudged among the
clergy. Now, that they may well understand the usefulness thereof,
know that . . . because it torments some clerks, that men should unbind
the secrets of scripture to the common people : and they refuse to know,
that the apostles of Christ preached and wrote their teaching in all
tongues and speeches to the people^.

1 Quoted te Winkel, 66:

Die altoes versch ende nuwe
Talrestont sijn daertoe gerust
Dat hem emmer begripens lust
Mijn gedicht ende mine wort.

2 For prose versions, V, Ncerlandaises [Versions], iv. 1549; HH, in. 119;
Boek'zaal, 235-9.

3 Quoted in full, Boekzaal. 367-9; partially, Tepley Bibel. 36. Actually the
author translated only the O. Test, portion of the Hist. Schol., which he

Ill] EARLY GOTTESFREUNDE 75

Similar references to the state of clerical opinion at the time are
too numerous and important for us to belittle the opposition
of these clerks as that of a "few zealots^."

§ 5. The German mystics of the upper Rhine in the fourteenth
century gave the first important impetus towards the use of
vernacular Bibles from the side of orthodoxy. The Beghards
were suspected of heresy: Maerlant had been a layman: but
many of the Gottesfreunde were Dominicans or Franciscans, and
therefore of trustworthy orthodoxy. It is true that direct advice
to lay people to use translations comes rather from the later
"Friends of God," when the movement had already become
partly heretical, or from the lay side of the movement, which
was accused of heresy at an early stage: but the work of the
most unimpeachably orthodox "Friends of God" did a very
great deal indirectly for the sanction of vernacular Bibles, by
encouraging the practice of meditation among the laity as a
primary duty.

Denifle has shewn that the real significance of the German
mystics, the Dominicans Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, and the other
Gottesfreunde, was not the originahty of their thought, — even
in Eckhart's case, — but their popularisation of scholastic
mystical teaching by means of vernacular sermons and vernacu-
lar writings^. Through these, the mystical theology of the
pseudo-Dionysius, of S. Augustine, S. Bonaventura and the
Victorines first reached a wide lay pubhc : and this led eventually
to a demand for bibhcal translations which devout lay people
could use for meditation. The fact is hardly (as Eicken ex-
presses it) 3 that teaching as to the duty of striving after im-
mediate communion with God led by analogy to the desire for
an immediate acquaintance with His Word; for the early

seems to have regarded as equivalent to a glossed text of the Bible : " It has
long been in my mind, that I would gladly translate the foundation of the
scripture out of Latin into Dutch, because I hope that many holy men who
are ignorant of clergy shall profit by it" (Bockzaal, 368). The book was
first printed in 1477 at Delft [id. 365), with the names of the printers, but
not the last editor.

1 Tepler Bibel. 36; Jonckbloet, i. 241; Hellwald, 102, 115.

2 Meister Eckhart's Lateinische Schriften, itnd die Grundsanschauung
seiner Lehre, in Archiv fiir Litter atur- und Kirchen-Geschichte des Mittelalters,
II. (1886), 416-.

3 Geschichte und System der Mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, Eicken, H.,
Stuttgart, 1887, 786.

76 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

followers of the Friends of God were taught to lay far greater
stress on guidance by a Friend of God, or enlightened spiritual
director, than on a personal study of the scriptures:

"Dear Christian men," said an early Friend of God, perhaps
Nicholas of Bale, " I ad^dse you in all truth that you learn to be able
to fight against all vices, . . . and whoever is not yet well prepared to
fight, let him seek out such men as are well learned in the eternal truth,
and ask them to teach him to fight against all vices: and let him also
gladly hear sermons and read good little books, through which men
may also become well instructed^."

"It would be well for such men, who wish to live to the truth,"
said Tauler, "to have a Friend of God, to whom they could submit
themselves, and who would direct them according to the Spirit of
God;. . .such men ought to seek an experienced Friend of God, even
twenty miles round, who would know the right way and guide them
aright^."

But, on the other hand, it was certain that teaching which en-
couraged lay people to imitate "religious" in the practice of
meditation and attention to God, would soon need to provide
material for such meditation. For a Benedictine monk or a
Dominican friar, the material had always been the Vulgate : the
sanction of German scriptures for nuns or tertiaries who could
not read Latin, and finally for lay people, followed naturally,
more especially when their use was only demanded for those
under close religious direction.

Meister Eckhart, or "the Master," as he was called by his
followers 3, died in old age in 1327, after being provincial of the
Dominican order in Saxony since 1304. His chief works remain
as vernacular sermons, no doubt preached chiefly in convents
of Dominican nuns. Denifle has pointed out the importance of
the constitutions for the reform of these houses in the German
provinces in 1281. Dominican convents of women were especially
numerous and important in Germany, and most of all on the
upper Rhine, and the care of these obviously involved a great
labour to the friars' convents. In 1252 Innocent IV had removed
the charge of all of them except two from the Dominican order,

^ Printed in C. Schmidt's Johannes Tauler von Strassburg, Hamburg,
1841, 231.

* The Inner Way, Hutton, A. W., London, 1909, 174.
^ Archiv, 11. 529.

Ill] DOMINICANS AND GERMAN MYSTICISM 77

to leave the brothers more free for preaching, etc.^ (just as in
1242 the chapter general had sought to interdict the friars from
being visitors to, or in charge of, women's convents). The
example of this pope however was not followed 2, the care of
them was again committed to the brothers, and in 1281 Her-
mann of Minden, the provincial, drew up constitutions for the
reform of the houses, and their direction by the friars. " Ye shall
give heed," it was provided, "that the sisters lack not the word
of God, but that it shall be preached to them frequently, accord-
ing as befits their learning, by learned brothers^." It was further
enacted that the lecturers at the Dominican studia, and the
masters of arts, were to lecture to the sisters, and that these
sermons were to take place on vigils rather than on saints' days
or Sundays, in order that the people should not be attracted
from the houses of the brethren, or from their parish churches,
on those days, — a provision which clearly shews that lay people
were admitted to hear the sermons, probably in the sisters' ante-
chapels. This provision was carried out, and the most learned of
the brothers were, sent to preach to the sisters: a circumstance
which was the main cause of the spread of mystical ideas among
the laity. Many of the German mystical sermons were thus de-
livered, including those of Eckhart and Tauler; the brothers
preached the theology they had themselves learned, but "sicut
eruditioni ipsarum convenit," in German. Denifle claims that a
large number of women in the Dominican convents came from
the highest burgher class, and some from the nobility*: their
intelligence was not slight, and fitted them to profit by such
sermons^. Such was the genesis of German mystical preaching

^ Archiv, 11. 642.

2 To Denifle's regret: he sees a connexion between this burden on the
brothers, and the paucity of Dominican theologians in Germany in the
fourteenth century; id. 645. There was exactly the same problem in the
Franciscan order; nearly a century earlier, it meets us among the Prae-
monstratensians.

* Id. II. 645, 650.

* Id. II. 647.

* The Dominicanesses at Nuremberg had more than one volume of
Eckhart's sermons, c. 1469, and many other sermons: some taken down by
one of the sisters during the sermon; cf. p. 112. Mediaeval writers hke Rolle,
the author of theCloiid of Unknowing, and Hilton give such frequent warnings
that their metaphors must not be understood literally, that the need of
some degree of education in the hearers of mystical discourses is apparent.

78 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

within the Dominican order, afterwards copied sporadically by
other orders : Strassburg was thus a centre of German mysticism,
because it had seven convents of Dominican nuns. The sermons
influenced not only the nuns, but the laity who frequented their
chapels, to whom the friars were also confessors and directors;
and in the fourteenth century the term "Friend of God" was
used, not of the members of a particular rehgious association,
but of those who aspired to a hfe of mystical piety, whether
rehgions, secular priests or lay people.

The leader of the movement in its early stages was a layman,

Nicholas of Bale, who was influential between 1330 and 1382,

and acted as spiritual director to four other laymen who lived

with him, and also to Tauler in his youth^, and to Rulman Mers-

win of Strassburg. Nicholas himself had been a young knight,

had been converted, and given himself to the study of the

saints' hves in German. He was regarded by Tauler as a man of

the greatest holiness, and only at the end of his career incurred

suspicion of heresy, through confusion with the Beghards. He

evaded the inquisition for a time, but was finally burned as a

heretic,— and as a " Friend of God," not as a Beghard,— in 1397^:

one of the most celebrated of his pupils, Martin of Mainz, a

Benedictine monk of Reichenau, having suffered in 1393.

Other Friends of God were also burnt, before and after this

date;— there was enough burning of Beghards and Friends of

God at this time to justify any English Lollard's fear of the same

fate for ^'■ears before the De Haeretico Comhurendo statute of

1401. The movement was throughout regarded with some

jealousy by the clergy, on account of its lay element : but it may

fairly be considered orthodox until brought into disrepute by

the speculations of Rulman Merswin, a layman who founded a

religious community near Strassburg, and was condemned as a

heretic in 1382, though his community survived him.

Between 1300 and 1350, when verse translations and homihes
upon the Sunday gospels were being prepared in the north of
England, and a verse Legendary, or lives of the saints, in the

1 Gieseler, iv. 186; Friedjung, 185. See also Denifle's researches on the
early Gottesfreunde, Tauler and Merswin in Das Buck von geistlich Armuth,
Munich, 1877, preface, and Tauler's Bekehnmg, 1879.

- The exact date is disputed.

Ill] TRANSLATIONS BY THE GOTTESFREUNDE 79

south, parallel work was going forward among the Friends of
God in Germany. A German gospel harmony, with the epistles
for Sundays and saints' days, dates from 1367^: but a later
manuscript incorporates the preface of a biblical translator of
about 1340^. The latter was a layman of the Gottesfreunde type,
who believed that biblical translations would be useful to lay
people, but was much opposed by orthodox scholars and ecclesi-
astics for such a belief, and for engaging on the work of trans-
lation; the opposition he mentions is like that of the Dutch
translator of the Histona Scholastica^, but he describes his
enemies more vividly and at greater length. A translation in
prose of the Sunday gospels and epistles was also apparently
prepared by the Gottesfreunde about 1340^ : it may go back to
earlier collections made by the immediate followers of Eckhart
for German nuns: and these again may have been founded on
the Waldensian translations condemned by German inquisitors
about 1250, and earlier. The collection of c. 1340 is contempo-
rary and has been connected with the work of another Friend
of God, Hermann of Fritzlar^. The latter collected, between
1343 and 1349, ^ set of prose sermons on the lives of the saints,
in which the mystical teaching of Eckhart is intermingled, and
wrote a preface to them, with illustrations from his own travels
in Italy, Spain and Germany. His sharp reproaches of worldly
priests and teachers are similar to those of Nicholas of Bale, and
the above-mentioned translator; and he made use of earlier
material in apparently the same way as the collector of the
Sunda}^ epistles and gospels.

There is thus a certain amount of direct evidence that the
Friends of God, orthodox or semi-orthodox, advocated the use
of biblical translations by the laity. Nicholas of Bale, or one of
his early followers, urges the reading of German books of piety

1 This is the earliest plenarj'^ quoted by Haupt in the list of MSS. cited in
Walden. Urs. 26.

2 Printed p. 118. The translator apparently belonged to the same period
as Nicholas of Bale, and Hermann of Fritzlar, but he may have been
slightly later.

' See p. 74.

* See ADB, viii. 118, and Keller, 47.

5 See HH. His Buck von der Heiligen Leben followed an earlier compila-
tion, perhaps by the Dominican, Gieseler von Schlotheim, lector at Cologne
and Erfurt, and the latter used a still earlier one, c. 1337.

8o PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

in 1356: it is noticeable both that he is not mainly concerned
with biblical translations (though he may have included such
books as German plenaries among the books he considered
useful), and that there were many "great teachers" of the time
who considered German books of edification, of any sort, un-
lawful for the laity, — an opinion stated as common knowledge
in an imperial edict of 1369. After the passage quoted earlier,
the tract continues:

But some teachers say, that German books are harmful to Chris-
tianity. That in one way is very true, and in another way not true.
In one wa}^ it would certainly be good that certain books should not
be turned into German, the books that have many glosses, for such
books do not appertain to lay people. For you will take a part of them,
and expound it according to your carnal manners, and you cannot
get the matter clear, and so you go astra^^: and such glossed books
are proper for the priesthood. But such little books as this little book
is, and also other German books which are of this kind, and moreover
not written contrary to the hol}^ scriptures, — such German books are
very useful and very good for simple people, and you shall not let
the great teachers deprive you of them (for those teachers themselves
are full of the scriptures and the doctrine of God) ; if they seek them-
selves, in the honour of this world, more than God. But where you find
teachers who seek not themselves, them shall you gladly obej-, . . .
and such counsel is, moreover, not contrary to holy scripture, for the
holy scripture and the Holy Ghost are in union one with another ^

The next reference is more explicit. Otto of Passau, a Fran-
ciscan lector at Bale, wrote in 1386 a book of allegorical and
mystical piety, called the Four and twenty elders, or the Golden
Throne, in reference to the Elders of the Apocalypse^. Nothing
is known of Otto except what he himself tells us in the preface^ ;
the book was regarded as orthodox and became intensely
popular, though it appeared just at the time when the Gottes-

^ C. Schmidt's Tauler, 231.

- Die vier und zwanzig Alten, oder der guldin Tron, Antony Sorg.
Augsburg, 1480, to which the references are given, the later editions being
unfoliated. A modernised edition was printed in 1835 at Landshut, as the
tenth volume of the Leitstern auf der Bahn des Heils, entitled Die Krone der
Aeltesten.

* See Boekzaal, 322, and E. Schroeder's article in Gott. Gel. Anz. 1S88,
p. 251. This article, while treating of the attitude of religious orders to
biblical translations, confuses the authorship of the Four and twenty elders,
attributing it on p, 255 to Otto of Passau, and on p. 257 to John Nider, the
Dominican. This article is probably the source of the error in HH, where
John Nider is said to have written a book called Four and twenty ciders.

Ill] OTTO OF PASSAU 8l

freunde movement was declining into heresy^. The preface
states that the book is addressed to all the Friends of God,
clerical and lay, male and female, — that is, it was intended for
the devout section of the population only. Certain sections deal
with the holy scriptures 2, their great usefulness, and the obliga-
tion of man to follow them ; and in one place the author gives the
first mediaeval approbation of biblical translations by a religious :

I advise you also with all diligence, to read the scriptures of the
Old and the New Testaments oftentimes with reverence and earnest-
ness, either in German or in Latin, if you understand Latin^.

The advice is one of great interest, but it proceeded from the
participator in a certain movement and was addressed to a
certain class, and cannot therefore be quoted as representative
of the general opinion of the friars or the clergy at the time. If
it were so, it would be paralleled in the very numerous con-
temporary manuals and works of piety.

§ 6. The Beghards, as has been said, dragged on a rather
precarious existence during the fourteenth century. Restrictions
had been placed upon them by three synods from 1269 to 1281 :
and a sweeping condemnation was passed against them by the
synod of Beziers in 1299. They were again condemned at
Cologne in 1306, and in 1310 the synod of Trier passed a decree
against " those who under a pretext of feigned religion call them-
selves Beghards. . .and, hating manual labour, go about begging,
holding conventicles, and posing among simple people as inter-
preters of scripture^." An attempt was made at Vienne in 131 1
to suppress them, as the main instruments in the spread of
heresy : and between 1366 and 1378 a fresh and serious attempt
was made to suppress them in Germany, by Urban V and
Gregory XI, aided by the "pfaffenkaiser," Charles IV.

^ The authorities quoted are the Bible, the Fathers, "those heathen writers
whom the Church does not condemn," and S. Elizabeth of Schonau.

* 1480 ed. f. ciii. : "Der xiiii alte leret von gotlicher geschrifft und gotlicher
kunst." f. cix. : "Von der heiligen geschriflft wie man jr volgen sol " f. ex. :
"Was die heilig geschrifft grossen nucz schafft."

' Id i. cxi. : " Ich rat dir auch mit allem fleiss das du die geschrifft der
alten und der newen ee dick und vil mit andacht und mit ernst lesen solt,
es sei in teiitsch oder in Latein, ob du Latein verstandest."

* Mansi, xxv 261: " Seque fingunt coram personis simplicibus exposi-
tores sacrarum scripturarum." The Waldensian influence had thus survived
in the Beghards of the Rhine country in 1310.

D.w. B. 0

82 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

It was recognised, in this outburst of persecution, that heretical
behef s had been spread by German ' ' scriptures, ' ' including glossed
plenaries and other books of homilies and semi-mystical devo-
tion. Certain Friends of God at least had contended for German
epistles and gospels, against the opinion of the main body of the
clergy; and some had already been burned as Beghards and
heretics. The Beguines who approximated to the Brethren of
the Free Spirit had used the condemned works of Berengarius
and John Peter Olivi; and other Beguines had used the German
sermons of Eckhart to support their pantheistic heresies.
Eckhart's works had been condemned by bull in 1329^, as a
result of this confusion, though a later buU had tacitly ignored
the earlier condemnation. It was probably against the works of
Eckhart that the reiteration of the prohibition of German scrip-
tures was largely directed, either because they were still con-
sidered heretical by some theologians (though studied with the
greatest reverence in some Dominican convents), or because
their doctrine was considered utterl3^ unsuitable for the un-
instructed laity, — a qualification which was constantly recog-
nised by mystical writers in the vernacular themselves, in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A champion of German
scriptures in 1398 expressly excepted

those books which in the st\^le of their writing differ from that of
the doctors of the Church : and this is said because of certain German
books which have a new, profane, and abusive mode of speech, and
certain of them are entitled: Of Eckhart, or t\\e Sermon'i of Eckhart^.

John Nider^ the Dominican also described certain Beghards^ at
the time of the council of Bale, who

use subtle, sublime, spiritual and metaphysical words, such as the
German tongue can hardly express, so that scarcely any man, even an
educated man, can fully understand them; and in these they wrap up
lofty sentences about spirit, abstraction, various lights, divine persons,
and the grades of contemplation.

And certain German books, full of their subtle sermons, plainly do

1 Raynaldi, Ann. Eccles., Lucca, 1750, V, 450.

- See p. 75.

3 A Swabian and a reformer, belonging to the convent of Bale; ti438-

^ In his Formicarius, or Myrmecia Bonorum; in the 161 1 edition, lib. iii.
c. V. p. 215; of. Schroeder in Gd«. Gel. Anz. 1888, p. 255. For the same argu-
ment against translations in England, see pp. 289-94.

Ill] IMPERIAL PROHIBITION OF I369 Sz

good service to their evil intention, and use such expressions; and
some of the books were written foolishly and rashly, or were allowed
to be copied, — unless I much mistake; and there are some at least
which are obviously falsel)- ascribed to certain honest and ancient
doctors of religion by certcin Beghards or heretics. For they hide
the poison of their depravity beneath the cloak of such words, and
express the venom of their iiialignant heresy by means of them.

Against such books of subtle sermons, and the translations
undertaken by the laymen of the Gottesfreunde movement, a
sweeping measure of prohibition was enacted by the emperor.
Charles IV had always been a staunch supporter of the Church
and ecclesiastics, and was himself interested in devout literature,
legends of the saints^, etc. : but it was not till 1369 that his inter-
view with Urban V at Rome led him to undertake a campaign
against German books of piety. The pope had already made a
fresh attempt to suppress heresy in Germany by means of the
inquisition: in 1367 he sent Walter Kerling^, and three other
Dominicans, as inquisitors under papal authorisation, and called
on all German prelates to support them : one heretic was burnt at
Erfurt and seven elsewhere. When the Emperor was returning
from Rome in 1369, he issued from Lucca, at the request of the
pope^, a number of bulls in support of the inquisition, assuring
to it privileges and protection which it had never before received
in Germany*. The fourth of such edicts issued within a week
dealt with the subject of German books at great length. It was
addressed to the Dominican inquisitor Walter Kerling, to Louis
de Caligula, and two other Dominicans to be chosen by Walter
Kerling as fellow inquisitors. After the usual reference to the
tares (zizania), which the enemy of man had sown in the Lord's
field, and which should be rooted up b}' the faithful, it proceeded'^ :

^ See Friedjung, 149. '' Id. 194.

' Id. 195; and Mosheim, 368. The first of the group of imperial edicts
issued in support of the inquisition in 1369 was promulgated "opitulante
Domino Deo ac domino nostro summo pontifice mandante. ' ' Friedj ung states
that these edicts were aimed against the heretical Beghards, and the "last
remains of the Waldensian heretics," p. 196.

* 10 June, 1369, jurisdiction of the inquisition increased indefinitely: six
great nobles appointed its protectors: order for the confiscation of a third
part of a heretic's goods to be confiscated to the inquisition; 11 June, 1369,
all houses of Beghards and Beguines to be suppressed; 17 June, 1369, the
last unconditional edict modified in favour of the orthodox and old estab-
lished Beghard liouses; 17 June, 1369, edict against German devotional
books; cf. Friedjung, pp. 194-9.

* Mosheim, pp. 368-75; hiq. iii. 612.

6—2

84 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

Wherefore, since we have received truslrworthy information that
there are in Germany sermons, treatises and other books written in
the vulgar tongue, which are used by Iciy people, or those who are
almost lay people^: and that these books are generally harmful,
erroneous, and infected with the lepros) of heresy : and that the lay
people who read them do not understand them in a safe and good
sense^: and that they wish to know thrc^ugh their own understanding
more than it befits them to know, and not soberly and according to
the measure of faith : and that they turn away their ears from hearing
the truth, and turn themselves instead to error, through him who
is the father of lies. . . .Wherefore we strictly' enjoin and command all
the venerable archbishops, bishops . . . and all clerics secular and regu-
lar. . .and all dukes, princes, marquesses etc.. . .and each and every
man, on their obedience to the Holy Roman Empire: . . .that ye assist
the said inquisitors and their deputies to demand and confiscate such
books, treatises, sermons, pamphlets, leaves, bound books, etc.,
written in the vulgar tongue, from all men, whatsoever their rank:
and any other books written in any other manner, which are suspected
of containing heretical errors, which books might give occasion to
certain seducers of souls to preach and teach errors. And all these are
to be taken from all persons, secular and regular, and chiefly from lay
people (and the more especially, since it is not lawful, according to
canon law, for lay people of either sex to read any books whatsoever
of holy scripture written in the vulgar tongue^), so that such books
may be examined : lest through a false understanding men should
be led into heresy or error, even as many Beghards and Beguines in
these days are, alas, led into error and heresies. And ye shall lend
your counsel and effectual help, with all your powers and with devout
minds, to punish those who are rebellious and disobedient with the
penalties set forth below, according to the style of the inquisition, . . .
for the effectual prevention of books of this kind. . . . And ye shall lend
your counsel and effectual help that the aforesaid books should be
presented to the inquisitors to be burned*.

^ " Personas laycas vel pane laycas." Laicus in mediaeval Latin frequently
bears the sense of unlettered: as here.

^ This and the following sentence are such as were frequently used in argu-
ments against biblical translations, by those who claimed that a translation
of the bare text did not give the subsidiary mystical understandings, and
was dangerous. See Index, Textus.

^ ' ' Praesertim cum laycis utriusque sexus, secundum canonicas sanctiones,
etiam libris vulgaribus quibuscunque de sacra scriptura uti non liceat."
Mosheim, p. 370.

* Martini printed this edict from Mosheim's unpublished work, and colla-
ted it with a MS. at Helmstadt: see p. 368, and Inq. Neer. i. 215-17. The
names of the witnesses to this group of edicts leave no reason to doubt their
genuineness. The edict is perhaps the "antique statute" referred to in
certain statutes made for Dutch tertiaries by the chapter-general at
Utrecht: the copy was made by the warden of the Barbara- Kloster at Delft
before 1585: "Renovatum est illud antiquum statutum, quod cantica

in] THE GERMAN ROLLE §5

It is noticeable that this very stringent edict was addressed to
the inquisitor to whom the Emperor had, shortly before, "con-
firmed and approved all the powers and privileges of inquisitors
in Lombardy, France, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Italy, Gallia,
Germany and elsewhere^."

The decree of 1369 had an indirect result in the breach between
Charles IV and Henry von Miigeln^, who in one sense compares
with the Englishman, Richard Rolle, and in another with Maer-
lant. Like Maerlant, he was a layman and court poet, — one of
the most famous amongst the meistersingers. He wrote some
verses descriptive of the contents of the Bible: and then, like
Rolle, and at about the same stage of the development of the
vernacular tongue, he prepared a translation of the psalter, with
glosses. Rolle wrote his psalter before 1349: von Miigeln some-
time between 1345 and 1370. It is significant that both chose
the psalter for translation, and both thought it necessary to
afford a gloss as well. Rolle chose the gloss of Peter Lombard 3,
von Miigeln the postill of Nicholas of Lyra, — a much more up-
to-date choice. Lyra was a Franciscan, with a great reverence
for the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and considerable
knowledge of Hebrew. Von Miigeln's choice of Lyra's postill
for the gloss made his work fairly popular and simple, since
Lyra made no attempt to give a fourfold interpretation to each
passage : but there is no indication that his translation was made
specially for lay people. He had hved for a long time at Prague,
enjoying the favour of Charles IV, but, after the issue of the
1369 edict against German scriptures, he fell into disfavour and
left the court.

It is noticeable, in contrast to Charles IV's edict, that his

canticorum, Biblia ac etiam novum testamentum, ante annos aliquot im-
pressa, non legentur, iuxta mandatum imperiale, nee detinebuntur in con-
ventibus sororum " {Hist. Episcopatuum foederati Belgii, Van Heussen.
Antwerp, 1755, i. 413). The reference may however be to the imperial edicts
(1529, 1533 or 1550) of Charles V, prohibiting the making or use of transla-
tions of the Bible: see Harney, 212, 218.

1 Mosheim, 345. This is significant as shewing that provincial decrees,
passed for the strengthening of the inquisition, were not purely local in
effect, but were regarded as precedents. As Kerling was expressly given
the powers of the inquisitors in Toulouse, it was certainly within his right
to enforce the decree of Toulouse, 1229, against biblical translations.

2 Walther, 589, 718; cf. infra, p. 145.
' See p. 146.

86 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.

successor, the Emperor Wenzel, had more Uberal ideas about
translations. He is said to have ordered a certain Martin Rotlev
to translate the Bible, and a late fourteenth century manuscript
exists, known as the Wenzel Bible, though it contains only the
Old Testament^. The translation, however, is related to that in
other manuscripts, and goes back to a common original, now
lost. The book was not meant for popular use, and was not
widely copied: it was probably meant for the possession of the
Emperor or some exalted personage.

Like the earlier decrees of Toulouse, Paris, etc., the imperial
edict clearly prohibited German translations of the Bible,
plenaries, service books, psalters, sermons, books of mystical
instruction, and not only these, but (if strictly interpreted) such
orthodox manuals as books of vices and virtues, confession
books, etc., — since these, like Eckhart's sermons, could be re-
garded by a zealot as " de sacra scriptura tractantes." It was, in
fact, an attempt to revive the policy of the synod of Toulouse:
but at a date when the growth of orthodox vernacular manuals
made such a sweeping prohibition impossible. In England it
would have rendered illegal Rolle's psalter, the Prick of Con-
science, and the Ayenbite of Inwyt, while in Germany the develop-
ment of German plenaries and orthodox manuals was more
advanced. Etienne de Bourbon could enforce such a decree,
because orthodox French manuals in the thirteenth century
were still so rare as to be possessed only by the great: Walter
Kerling could scarcely do so, and it was possibly at his request
for further instruction, possibly at the petition of Nicholas of
Bale himself^, that a fresh edict was issued by Gregory XI in
1375, the rescript Ad Apostolatus^. This was much less sweeping
than the imperial edict :

Since it has come to our apostolic ears, that in some regions in
which ye exercise the office of inquisitors of heretical pravity, there
are certain simple laymen, for the most part illiterate, who read or
have read to them certain books of sermons written in the vulgar
tongue, which are said to contain heretical errors: and that these
laymen usurp to themselves the office of preaching, and publicly

^ See F. Jelinck, Spy ache der W enzelbibels , Gorz, 1899; and Amer. J our.
of Phil. XXI. 62-75, The Wenzelbibel, by W. Kurrelmeyer.

2 Friedjung, 198.

3 Mosheim, 378; Inq. Neer. i. 237.

Ill] GREGORY XI AND VERNACULAR VERSIONS 87

propound doctrine which they know not, because they have not
learnt it: and that through reading and hearing what they do not
understand, become masters of error rather than disciples of truth:
Since therefore books of this kind in the vulgar tongue are too dan-
gerous, and since it is not lawful to preach except for those to whom
it is expressly granted, . . .we command your discretion by the apos-
tolic authority, that you cause such books to be brought forward
and exhibited to you, in those places in which ye exercise the office
of the inquisition, in order that you may diligently examine them
among you ; and ye shall condemn by apostolic authority those books,
or those parts of them, in which ye shall find heretical errors. And ye
shall announce them to be erroneous and heretical to the people in
sermons, and by the apostolic authority prohibit for the future any
such lay person from presuming to preach, or any other man from
daring to write, buy, sell, or possess condemned books or sermons of
this kind, or to say that he believes any dogma written in them, or in
anywise to disclose it^.

Moreover, the words secundtim canonicas sanctiones express the
belief that bibhcal translations^ were generally prohibited, — a
belief held by the majority of ecclesiastics down to the last
quarter of the fourteenth century, and by a very important
number of them, even in Germany, to a later date. This pro-
hibition is referred to as a matter of common knowledge, for
which proof is unnecessary. The canon law, like the common law
in England, was primarily unwritten and traditional, to be de-
cided by cases tried in the ecclesiastical courts. By this time it
had become almost entirely written, the earlier traditional law
having been further elaborated by papal legislation, as English
common law was gradually limited and defined by statute law ;
and it was, finally, expressed in the great ecclesiastical codes,
the Decreinm of Gratian, and the Decretals of Gregory IX, the
Liber Sextus, etc. The words "canonical sanctions" might refer
to any such expression of the canon law, as interpreted by
commentators of acknowledged authority, or to synodal edicts.
But the common knowledge here appealed to was probably that
of the confiscation and burning of vernacular scriptures by the
inquisition, from which the inference was obvious that "canoni-
cal sanctions" lay behind their action. These sanctions were not

^ Friedjung, 198.

^ Compare also the frequent condemnation of vernacular prayer-books in
the examinations of suspected Lollards, in/ra: and the fact that a Dutch
theologian found occasion for defending the usefulness of vernacular prayers,
P- 95-

88 PROHIBITION OF VERNACULAR BIBLE READING [CH.III

simply the prohibitions of provincial synods, binding only within
the province itself, for the inquisitor of Passau's evidence shews
that German Bibles were regarded as evidence of heresy in other
provinces than Trier, and this is confirmed by that of David of
Augsburg for Austria and Bavaria, and the wide powers given
to Walter Kerling himself. Not merely were the decisions of
local synods cumulative in effect as precedents, but, wherever
the inquisitors worked, the sanction of the synod of Toulouse in
this matter seems to have lain behind them. For most people,
assistance at a book-burning was a far more frequent source of
education than the study of the decisions of provincial synods,
and it was to knowledge thus gained that the edict of 1369
appealed. In any case, the words are those of the Emperor's
responsible advisers, and^not merety of a few "fanatics or
zealots."

CHAPTER IV

Bible reading in the Empire and the Netherlands

c. 1400-1521

§ I. At the end of the fourteenth centurj^ a fresh movement,
the "New Devotion," arose in the Netherlands, and sought to
estabhsh a devout community Hfe, not under religious vows like
those of the monks, and not supported by mendicancy like the
friars. This movement of the "Brethren of the Common Life"
struggled to increase devotion among lay people, and it succeeded
in converting a large section of orthodox German opinion to the
usefulness of German and Dutch books of scriptures for this
purpose. The "New Devotion" was founded through the
exertions of Gerard Groot, who died in 1584: and it took shape
in the formation of houses of Brethren or Sisters of the Common
Life, as at Deventer, or of canons regular under the influence of
Groot's teaching, as at Zwolle. The strength of the movement
lay largely in its insistence on learning among the brethren or
canons themselves, and their zeal for secular education. It was
not merely their devotion, but their intellectual ability that
enabled the founders of the New Devotion to save themselves
from being confounded with the heretical Beghards, and to pro-
tect themselves from the attacks of their enemies : their learning
also of course largely protected them not merely from the
punishment for heresy, but from heresy itself. Nevertheless,
they were at first bitterly attacked as "Lollards" and heretics,
both on account of their zeal for the use of German books of
devotion by the laity, and through the jealousy of many regulars,
who regarded any life in community not under the three re-
ligious vows as necessarily "Beghardist" and "Lollard."

In 1398 the Brethren of the Common Life summoned to their
house in Deventer a gathering of the law school at Cologne and
other friendly ecclesiastics, to obtain from them legal pronounce-
ments, or "determinations," on the many points for which the
inquisition attacked them. The most important was that on the

go BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

lawfulness of the manner of community life which they practised,
and which the new communities of sisters practised under their
direction. But second in the list of determinations^, both for
length and importance, came a joint determination of the doctors
on the lawfulness of the use of German "scriptures " in the wider
sense, including biblical translations, by the laity. The librarian
at the house of De venter at the time was Gerard Zerbolt-, or
Gerard of Zutphen, and it is more than likely that in such a
capacity he acted as secretary to the conference of doctors, and
possibly even had some share in the drawing up of their joint
determination. From the fact that a seventeenth century
editor 3 printed the determination, in a slightl}' altered form,
from a manuscript which he calls "the book of Gerard Zerbolt,"
the tract has long been ascribed to this brother. The earliest
manuscript, however, states quite clearly^ that when certain

^ The determinations exist in four MSS. (i) Royal Library at the Hague,
MS. 355, the earhest, (2) Burgundian Library at Brussels, MS. 2285-2301,
quarto, (3) Helmstadt MS., see Mosheim, 433-, (4) Cologne MS., see
HH, III. 478. Jostes printed the Hst of the determinations, and that on
vernacular scriptures, in HJ, xi. 14-22; 709-17, without stating from which
MS. he was printing : but Dr By vanck, librarian at the Royal Library, the
Hague, finds that his version is identical with that of the Hague MS. Mo-
sheim used this MS. also, and his editor Martini collated his transcript with
the Helmstadt MS. Mosheim printed, not this determination on vernacular
scriptures, but some of the others more directly defending the brethren's
manner of life against the inquisition, and also the inquisitor's comments
upon them; for the documents in this heresy trial, see Inq. Neer. 11. 176-84.

^ See Jostes, Die Schriften des Gerhard Zerbolt von Zittphen in HJ, xi.
(1890), I-; Revius, 41.

^ Revius.

* The list of doctors' names is given in the title of the determination on
vernacular scriptures, which comes second on the list, and not at the
beginning, as responsible for the whole set of determinations. The first
(see HJ, XI. 4) is a tract " from the sayings of the saints and the determina-
tions of the doctors" on the mode of life of the brethren; the second, this
tract with the doctors' names ; the third and fourth are attributed to Everard
Foec; the fifth, a direct attack on the inquisitors of Cologne, is by a " certain
devout and learned man" who prefers to remain anonymous; the sixth
is the determination of abbot Arnold. Jostes regards the list of nine lawyers
as responsible for the whole set of determinations, and imagines that one
of them must have been responsible for the tract on vernacular scriptures :
he inclines to abbot Arnold, while others have ascribed it to Everard Foec.
But since this special tract is attributed jointly in the MS. to the nine lawyers,
it is superfluous to ask which of them was the author, and misleading to call
the tract anonymous (HJ, xi. 14). Abbot Arnold's concurrence in it makes
him, as far as is known, the next religious after Otto of Passau to approve
of German Bibles, — but he excluded the Apocalypse as unsuitable for the
laity, while Otto's work is based upon it.

IV] DETERMINATION AT DEVENTER 91

doctors were assembled at Deventer in 1398 to give the brethren
their verdict on certain doubtful points, nine of them, whom it
mentions by name, concurred in giving this determination on
the lawfulness of vernacular scriptures. Of these nine, three
were doctors of law, three doctors of decretals, or canon law,
and three licentiates in law^. All were men of position and in-
fluence, and probably all were secular priests except the abbot
Arnold of Dyckeninghe. With their decision concurred "many
others," whose names are not given.

There are no grounds for supposing that the university of
Cologne had been especially influenced in its attitude to biblical
translations by the spread of Wyclifhte teaching, as was the
case at Prague. It was almost certainly influenced by the earlier
liberal teaching of the Waldensians, Beghards and Friends of
God, and it was certainly no friend of the inquisition introduced
by Charles IV: these influences and motives to some extent
account for the readiness of the doctors to support the Brethren
of the Common Life in the matter. It is interesting to compare
their pronouncement with the words of Matthias of Janov, a
doctor of Prague, who held the same views on many disputed
points as Wychffe, and died in 1394. He had the greatest
reverence for the sacred text, and, though he did not suggest
its popularisation, would perhaps have been ready to agree with
the doctors of Cologne in their determination.

"And because I read blessed Augustine-," he says, "in the book
Of Christian Doctrine, and Jerome, who says that the study of the text
of the most holy Bible is, first and last and above all things, necessary
to each man desiring to attain to a knowledge of theological truth :
and that the Bible is the first and fundamental matter, and ought so
to be, to each lettered Christian: immediately my soul was joined
to the Bible in a perpetual love. For I confess that from my youth

1 "Of Hermann Stakelwegghe, provost of S. George in Cologne, John de
Novo Lapide,' canon of Aachen, John called Bau scholasticus of Mechlin,
doctors of law: and of Arnold abbot of Dyckeninghe, Gerhard of Groningen,
John of Wercborch, doctors in decretals : and of Ralph ' de Rivo ' dean of
Tongres, licentiate in law ; and of Tielman Eckhart of Attendorn, licentiate in
law, advocate of the church of Cologne. With whose Responses concur Master
Everard Foec, dean of S. Saviour at Utrecht, licentiate in both laws, and
many others." Mosheim, 433; Inq. Neer. 11. 177.

* Gieseler, iv. 240. Purvey, the editor of the second version of the Wyclif-
fite Bible, had the same devotion to Augustine's O Christian Doctrine;
see pp. 281, 303.

92 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

it has not departed from me, even to old age, neither in the way, nor
when I was occupied, nor when I was at leisure. And in all my per-
plexity, in every doubtfulness, I ever found in and through the Bible
sufificing and enlightening help and consolation to my soul : and in all
my perturbations, persecutions and sadnesses I fled in all cases to the
Bible, which, as I have said, walks ever with me, as my best beloved.
. . . And when I saw that many men carried with them everywhere
the relics and bones of divers saints, for their especial defence and
singular devotion, I chose for myself the Bible as my elect, the com-
panion of my pilgrimage, to bear ever with me."

Matthias limited the necessity of a knowledge of the text of
the Bible to theological students, even though he took up a
Wycliffite position in many of his other writings. To what extent
the doctors of other German universities would have sided with
the lawyers of Cologne or with the chancellor of the university
of Paris, whose hostile attitude will be mentioned later, is
doubtful: but there would probably have been more liberal
opinion among the learned for the ten years before the council
of Constance than later. No doubt many potential German
Bibles burned with Hus.

The determination of the lawyers of Cologne and the abbot of
Dyckeninghe is headed thus:

It is asked whether it is lawful for lay people to read or possess sacred
books written in the vulgar tongue, or translated out of Latin into the
vulgar tongue'^}

To which it is briefly answered : that to read such books is lawful
and meritorious, provided they do not contain heresies or errors,
and especially if they treat clearly of plain subjects, and do not
disagree with the books of the saints, either in the style of the writer,
or in likeness of reasoning. Which is thus proved : if lay people ought
not to read such books, it must be either because they are lay people
and unlettered, and it is not lawful or suitable for such people to read
or study holy scripture: or else it is because, though it is not pro-
hibited for lay people to read holy scripture itself, yet it is unlawful
or evil to read or have holy scripture in the vulgar tongue. But neither
of these two can be proved : nay more, each of them is out of accord-
ance with the sayings of the saints, and contrary and repugnant to
their counsels : and this can be declared in many manners.

The arguments given in the determination are then collected
quite symmetrically under these two heads : and it is of especial
interest that Innocent Ill's letter to Metz, as incorporated in the

1 HJ. XI. 14.

IV] COLOGNE LAWYERS AND GERMAN SCRIPTURES 93

Decretal of Gregory IX^, is dealt with under the first head. That
is, the nine doctors allege it to prove that holy books may be
read by the laity : but not to prove that the canonical scriptures
may be read in the vulgar tongue; a conclusive e^ddence as to
their opinion on the letter. To prove that it is lawful and suit-
able for lay people to read holy scripture (in the wider sense),
they quote this letter of Innocent IIP, and passages from SS.
Augustine, Chrysostom, Jerome (who exhorted "not only a lay
woman, but over and above that, a married woman," to study
the scriptures), Gregory, etc.; and, like Maerlant, they lament
that "there are many lay people to-day, who constantly read
the Song of Roland and the Trojan War, and other foolish and
unprofitable fables: and indeed it would be beneficial to them to
expend that labour on reading and understanding divine
scriptures."

The doctors then pass to the second contention: that holy
scripture may be translated into the vernacular, "and first,
about the canonical scriptures." Here, they do not allege the
letter of Innocent III to Metz, as indeed, considering the letter
as a whole, they could scarcely do; but they point out that the
whole canonical scriptures were at first written in the language
of the people for whom they were intended, and not in Latin;
that the saints translated them for the benefit of the heathen to
whom they preached, — as S. Bartholomew is said to have done
in India; and that holy scripture was translated into Latin, not
in order that it might be hidden to certain people through their
ignorance, but expressly that it might be generally open to all.
They conclude, that the Hebrews, Chaldeans, Syrians, Arabs,
Goths (for whom Ulphilas translated the holy scriptures), the
Egyptians, Russians, and Armenians have the holy scriptures
in their vulgar tongues, " and perhaps, if any man inquired more
diligently, he would find that they exist in every language under
heaven : what then is the reason that holy scripture may be read
in the tongues of so many nations, and yet not in the German
language? "

1 See p. 31.

* Or rather, the sentence "the desire of understanding divine scriptures
is' not to be reprehended but rather commended," omitting the passages
following, "Cast not pearls before swine," etc.

94 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

This academical decision is in marked contrast with the con-
temporary judgements of distinguished Franciscan and Domini-
can friars in England ^ The arguments in favour of vernacular
scriptures are very similar to those given in the determination
for bibhcal translations which is probably by an English Lollard^;
but, while the English .thesis leaves the affirmative conclusion
unqualified, the Dutch one goes on to give five careful limita-
tions. First, the vernacular writings must not contain heresy,
for the letter of Gregor}^ XI in 1375 ^ was directed against such
books; secondly, they must deal with simple subjects, for
children should be fed with milk and not with meat; thirdly,
they must deal openly with the subject, and not figuratively,
like many books of the Old Testament (the prophetical books
and others), and some of the New Testament (hke the Apoca-
lypse and others), such as simple people cannot properly digest;
fourthly, they must be similar in style to the books of the
doctors of the Church, because "there are German books which
have a new, profane and abusive manner of speech, some of
which are called Of Eckhart, or the Sermons of Eckhart" ; and
lastly, the meaning must agree with the books of the saints, and
care should be taken to see that they are properly translated.

This determination was probably of great service to the
Brethren of the Common Life in their efforts to instruct lay
people and houses of sisters by means of German books and
pamphlets, and in their defence against the inquisitors. In
another of these determinations of 1398, Everard Foec, dean
of S. Saviour's at Utrecht, defended the brethren "against a
certain person who used publicly in his sermons to attack the
devout persons dwelling in [the brethren's] congregations." The
next is a defence "by a certain devout and learned man," "of
those devout persons of both sexes in the province of Cologne,
whom the inquisitors of heretical pravity have molested and
slandered for their customs and manner of life*." The Brethren

^ See pp. 289-94. * See Appendix.

^ Described as "illud rescriptum apostolicum quod incipit Ad Aposto-
latus " ; see p. 86.

* Mosheim prints, p. 443, " The observations of the Inquisitor of Belgium
on the Responses of the Masters of Cologne." It seeks to expose " the falsehoods
of the sect of the Gerardists (followers of Gerard Groot), who declare them-
selves protected by the determination of the Masters of Cologne. Extracts

IV] LATER EDITORS 95

of the Common Life succeeded in obtaining approval of their
manner of Hfe from the council of Constance; but the question
of the lawfulness of German devotional books remained open.
The brethren maintained their right to teach by these means,
but they had to struggle for it. On the one hand, the determina-
tion found a fresh editor, who may or may not have been him-
self one of the brethren, within a few years of 1398, and was
incorporated in a popular and orthodox volume of sermons
about 1466. On the other, the records of the brethren them-
selves contain evidence of the struggle, down to about the middle
of the fifteenth century.

To complete the history of the determination of 1398 first : it
is found in a slightly altered form in an early fifteenth century
manuscript, "the book of Gerard Zerbolt," from which Jacobus
Revius printed his history of De venter in 165 1. The manuscript
comes from the library of Deventer, and it is therefore likely
that the editor himself was one of the brethren; Revius states <
that he made two extracts, De lihris Teutonicalihtis'^, one of
which is substantially the 1398 determination, the other^ a short
and interesting tract on the lawfulness and profitableness of
using German prayers instead of Latin ones, by those who knew
no Latin. The editor changes the strictly logical form of the
earlier determination by substituting a preface of his own for

from the acts of the Inquisition will therefore be given by Master Eylardus .

Schoeneveld, friar preacher, in 1399 inquisitor for Saxony, in Utrecht,

and the surrounding neighbourhood." The extracts, whether obtained from

"Gerardists" examined by the inquisition, or in depositions given against

them, dealt with thejife in the Brethren and Sisters' communities: i.e. the

sisters say grace in the vernacular, listen in silence to reading during the

whole meal, and have every Sunday a sermon read to them in the vulgar

tongue by a sister; certain learned Carthusians object to their manner of life.

"They have certain pieces of information in defence of their order against

the inquisitors, which I judge to be the aforesaid determinations of the

doctors of Cologne, made impertinently enough on their behalf, and w-ith

evil intention translated into the vulgar tongue, with the authorities and

citations." (The Dutch translations exist also in the original MSS ) Cf. Inq.

Neer. 11. 184. This quarrel with the Dominicans of the inquisition probably

accounts for the hostility of M. Grabow, and the opponents of Busch. It is

interesting that this determination for vernacular scriptures was expressly

obtained as a defence against the inquisition.

^ Revius, 4 1 ; for a list of editors who have printed from Revius, or referred
to the tract, generally, as that of Gerard Zerbolt, see HJ, xi. 1-2.

- For this tract see Index, Vernac. prayers. It is found also in two MSS
containing the 1398 determination. ,

96 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

the original thesis, which maintained that either (i) it was wrong
for lay people to read holy scriptures, or (ii) it was wrong to
translate the scriptures into the vernacular. He then copies the
references of the original determination to prove its two points,
and adds the two points themselves at the end: regardless of
the fact that the two sets of citations have no exact relation to
the theory maintained in his own preface. It is interesting to
compare his own views on the subject, as stated in his preface,
with the conclusions of the original determination^ :

Since there are some who have small understanding of holy scrip-
ture and the sayings of the holy fathers, who believe and state that it
is unlawful for laymen, and unlettered people, to read divine scrip-
ture and exercise themselves in the sacred page: and since they judge
that devotional books written in the vulgar tongue, or translated into
it (such books as are solely or mainly intended for lay people),
ought to be condemned, and completely avoided and rooted out:
therefore, it is profitable to know whether all books of the scriptures
and the holy doctors, or which of such books, may lawfully be read
by lay people.

The editor then states that two kinds of teaching are found

in holy scripture, which (with S. Paul and the author of the

Epistle to the Hebrews) he compares to "milk and meat": the

simple and open doctrines, and those which are deep and

obscure, unsuitable for the simple. Lay people, he says, may

read in the vulgar tongue books which deal with matters of the

first class: but not those deaHng with the second. He defines

moreover books included in the first class: "such as the lives

and deeds of the saints, the passions and triumphs of the

martyrs, and other teaching concerning vices and virtues^, the

glory of the saints and the misery of the damned, and books like

these which are plain and open." It is noticeable that whereas

the original determination contended for the right of the laity

to read the more plain and open books of the Bible, this editor

does not : it is noteworthy that his Hst did not include vernacular

plenaries or gospel books. He did not, however, omit the

1 Revius, 41.

2 Books of Vices and Virtues were a distinct class in the middle ages,
generally analyses of the seven deadly sins, and the virtues opposed to them.
A "book of vices," or a "book of virtues" is considered sufficient title for
a mediaeval catalogue or will, cf. TV, 762.

IV] THE AUGUSTINIAN GOTTSCHALK 97

passages of his original citing authorities to prove that some
biblical books may be read in the vernacular; on the contrary,
when he began to copy the original determination, he copied all
the citations. But his own preface agrees exactly with the class
of Dutch books for which John Busch, a notable reformer in
this movement, contended in the early years of the fifteenth
century.

The determination was also used in a very popular collection
of sermons written about 1466, bj' the Augustinian hermit of
Osnabruck, Gottschalk [Holen^]. The sermon for the second
Sunday in Advent deals with the text : Quaecunque scripia sunt
ad nostram doctrinam scripta stmt, and contains a very short
epitome of the determ.ination, occupying not more than one-
eighth of the whole sermon. This has three sections, the first
shewing the necessity of written scriptures through the frailty
of human memorj^ and the second proving the supernatural
character of the canonical scriptures. The third begins by
stating that " It is doubted by many whether it is lawful to read
and possess sacred books written or translated in the vulgar
tongue." The main body of the determination is then sum-
marised very shortly, perhaps because the citations were felt to
be too academic for a sermon; but the limitations at the end
(that the said books must contain nothing heretical, and must
deal only with plain material, and that plainly, and in "a manner
according with the writings of the saints ") are given in full. The
greater part of the last section of the sermon proceeds to deal
with the necessity of avoiding pride in the collection of a great
multitude of books^. The collection was popular: and the in-
clusion even of the much-abridged determination shews Holen
to have regarded the use of translations as lawful.

Meanwhile, the Brethren of the Common Life continued to be
the chief champions of Dutch devotional books. But they had
to struggle for their opinions, even though they were no advo-

1 Cf. Sermonum opus exquisitissimum . . .lectoris patris Gotschalci eremitari
diui Augustini professi, 1517. Sermo V. Doniin. II in Adv.

^ This tract, usually attributed to Zetbolt, has also been ascribed to
Nicholas von Dinckelspiihl, originally through the mistake in Denis, i. 2477,
MS. dcxlvii, f. 8; Denis was followed by Aschbach, J., Gesch. der Wiener
Univ., Vienna, 1865, i. 440, and by Keller, p. 68. The latter also imagined
that the determination opposed translations.

D.W.B. 7

98 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

cates of unlicensed Bible reading among the laity^. The doctors
in 1398 had declared the use of translations of the simpler books
of the Bible canonical and lawful, and there is good reason to
believe that the brethren actually encouraged their use in the
houses of nuns and tertiaries which they directed. But among
the laity they only argued for the free use of Dutch books of
edification, not the canonical scriptures themselves; though they
would, no doubt, have been willing to allow particular penitents
to use Dutch or German plenaries. Vernacular lives of Christ^
were popular and lawful among the devout of the Netherlands,
as in other countries: there are indeed, a particularly large
number of such manuscripts.

It has been stated that the condemnation of the Dominican
Matthias of Grabow, the bitter enemy of the brethren, at the
council of Constance in 1415, was a triumph for the defenders
of Dutch Bibles-: but there is no evidence at all that the
Dominican had attacked the brethren on this score, or that the
fathers of Constance, including Gerson, who himself opposed
vernacular Bibles, would have condemned him for his attack on
Dutch scriptures.

An interesting Dutch manuscript was written in 1407 for the
library of the canons at Zwolle by John Henricson, who describes
himself as "the Warden^." He was probably only the scribe,
and there is no evidence that the manuscript was intended for
the use of lay people: but it contains interesting features. After
the Dutch pericope*, — gospels, epistles and Old Testament
lessons, — it contains a translation of S. Paul's epistles, with the
preface, possibly of John Henricson, but more probably of the

1 Eicken, 786, misrepresents the brethren's attitude when he says, "from
1400 onwards they made it one of their chief efforts to translate and pubhsh
translations of the holy scriptures," if he means canonical scriptures.

- Tepler Bibel. 38.

3 Cf. Jostes, Die Waldenser, 26, "dit boeck hoert in der clerckehus
bynnen Zwollen" ; " Here are the four gospels in Dutch. Written by me, John
Henricson the warden, an unworthy priest, in the year 1407, the Thursday
before the nativity of our Lady." These "four gospels" are actualty a
pericope, with the O. Test, lessons as well: they are followed by the trans-
lation of S. Paul's epistles, and by separate homilies upon them. The
preface to the epistles is printed in Boekzaal, pp. 235-9; Jostes regards the
date of the original translation of the epistles as about 1380. HJ, xi. 12.

* See p. 112 n. A pericope is a collection of the sections of holy scripture
appointed to be read in church.

IV] THE ZWOLLE EPISTLES 99

earlier translator. It states that S. Paul wrote his letters for all
Christians, some in Latin, some in Greek, some in Hebrew, so
that all alike could read them^:

And thus these epistles, which are profitable and useful to those
who understand Latin and Greek and Hebrew, are profitable also for
Dutchmen. And it is a strange thing, that we make and come across
so many Dutch books, and that these bright and shining epistles,
inspired by the spirit of the living God, are not commoner among
lay people, who hold Christ's teaching dear; for, next to the gospels,
these are the most edifying books that ever were written.. . .And
because the epistles are difficult, and treat of many matters in few
words (because Latin is more convenient for speech than Dutch),
therefore holy mother Church has come to the help of this difficulty
with the teacher's gloss, so that men may the better understand, and
not be put to confusion. Also, many matters, as has been explained,
are not here told in as few words as in the original.

The words and sentiments should be ascribed, however, to the
original translator, — probably some clerk influenced by the
Gottesfreunde movement, — and not to the warden at Zwolle.

Many instances shew the value set by the Brethren of the
Common Life upon biblical studies among themselves, — not, of
course from biblical translations. The first monastery of the
brethren, that at Windesheim, was begun in 1386, and one of its
chief works was the establishment of a corrected text of the
Vulgate, —a work, as in England at the date, necessary for those
interested in translations-. The chronicle of Windesheim states
that William Vornken, the prior, was a man of great piety, "and
he was no little esteemed among us, because he was able to make
moralisations and mj'stical interpretations of a part of the Bible,
and nearly the whole of the psalter^." John Scutken, a brother
of Windesheim who died in 1423, translated many service and

^ Boekzaal, 282. It is not certain that many contemporaries would have
agreed that the Pauline epistles were clear enough material for translation,
though books of the Sunday epistles, glossed, appeared later. Cf. the state-
ment of Jacob van Tombe, that because there were many passages hard
to be understood in S. Paul's epistles "our holy forefathers wisely decreed
that the unlearned laity should not read the Bible: but they themselves
selected out of the scriptures books of devotion called Getydeboexcketis ,
leaving out the aforesaid passages, and gave them to the laity." Claer
bewys van de warachtige Kerke Cristi, Antwerp, 1567, p. E i.

^ Cf. Busch, p. xix; and cf. Purvey's difficulties in establishing a correct
Latin text to translate from, p. 258.

* Busch, 331.

100 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

devotional books into Dutch, as Gerard Groot^ had done before
him : but he also translated the psalter, the pericope, and perhaps
a set of epistles and gospels with sermons. John Busch also, in
his autobiography, shews that much biblical study was pre-
scribed in the noviciate at Zwolle ^, where he received the habit
in 1419. Here he read both Old and New Testaments, with the
great doctors upon them, till he should be "as clothed in these
as the body is in its outward clothing." When, however, his
ceaseless study led to confusion and difficulties, master Arnold of
Noethern advised him that he was overstraining his capacities,
warning him that

children should be fed with milk and not with meat, . . . for it is not re-
quired that every one should know the deep things of God and holy scrip-
ture, and seek to investigate them : but it is enough for them to live
well, to believe well, and to have a good intention to do the will of God^.

A little later, Busch compares the holy scriptures to a fallen oak
tree, from which the different officials of the abbey each carrj^
off the roots, leaves, trunk, oak galls, according to their different
needs. Busch gives a long account of his subsequent career in
his Liher de Reformatione Monasteriofum, for he, like other
Brethren of the Common Life, not only directed new com-
munities, but was sent by the bishop to reform houses of the
older orders. He gives one or two instances shewing that German
books were used in such reformed convents*, and the catalogues
of such nunneries shew that they included a small number of
gospel and epistle books, though of course by far the greater
number were German or Dutch sermons, lives of saints, and
manuals of devotion.

Busch relates one interesting instance of how he overcame the
opposition of a Dominican to the lay use of German books ^.

" A certain lector of the order of friars preachers in the town of
Zutphen^," he says, " publicly preached, that lay people ought not to

^ There seems no evidence that Groot translated any part of the Bible :
but he perhaps translated freely in his sermons: "verbum Dei sanctum
Christi evangelium canonicamque scripturam. . .predicavit." Busch, 252.

* A house of Austin canons founded under Groot's influence.
^ Busch, 708, 9.

* Id. 730, "more than a hundred congregations of sisters in the diocese
of Utrecht used German books"; 732, "two nunneries at Zutphen had Ger-
man books read in refectory." * Id. 730. {Lib. de Ref. Monast. c. iii.)

* Id. c. iii. p. 730. Of a lector of the friars preachers , who preached that lay
people ought not to have German books.

IVJ JOHN BUSCH lOI

have German books, and sermons ought not to be made to the people
except in the church or the cemetery. Then I, being but a simple
brother in Windesheim, was sent to Zutphen with brother Theoderic
William to carry out some business for our monastery; and hearing
this, and knowing that more than a hundred congregations of sisters
and Beguines in the countr}^ round Utrecht had many German books,
which they read daily by themselves, or in the hearing of others in the
refectory, firmly contradicted this; because they read and listen to
German books of this kind in Zutphen, Deventer, ZwoUe, Kempen,
and everywhere, in the towns and country. I went therefore to the
church of the monaster^' of those friars preachers, and asked for the
prior, to whom I said :

' My lord prior, I have heard your lector preach publicly that lay
people ought not to have German books. Now he preached this
wrongly, and he ought publicly to retract it. For the princes of the
land, and the common people, men and women, have many books
written in German, and read in them and study them. Even you and
your brothers often preach to the people in the vulgar tongue. Do
you wish, then, that your sermons should be remembered ? ' And he
answered: 'Certainly.' Then I said: 'If they had them in writing,
then they would the better remember them : why therefore ought they
not to have books in German ? '

Then he answered : ' Many lay people have books in German,
namely of Sentences, and the like, which a certain doctor of our order
translated from Latin into German: and some have the missal with
the canon in German^, and therefore it is not good for them to have
or read books in German.'

To whom I said: 'No, I do not approve of that, that simple lay
people, men and women, should have such lofty and divine books in
GeiTnan ; nay, for when I have found the canon [of the mass] in Ger-
man among nuns, I have burnt it. But moral books of vices and
virtues, of the incarnation, life and passion of our Lord, of the life
and holy conversation and martyrdom of the apostles, martyrs,

1 Cf. the quotations from the Formulare Inquisitionis, 1420, in the Staats-
archiv at Miinster, Jostes, Waldenserbibeln , HJ, xv. (1894), 779- The
inquisitor, James of Swabia, wrote to ask for instructions as to his powers
with regard to German plenaries, or even German mass books. He had found
"complete mass books written in the vernacular among lay people, the
canon only excepted, and also other books, namely, expositions of the
gospels, and such like." " It is doubtful," he says, "what ought to be done
about these books in such times as ours. For it is said that in some places
heretical lay people, both men and women, use these books, perchance with
the canon, and believe, according to the Waldensian error, that it is lawful for
laymen to celebrate and say mass; and the canon may easily be added to
these books, and heresies and errors follow, which cannot be so easily extir-
pated. It is asked therefore, what should be done with these books. Appa-
rently they ought not to be burned, because there is no heresy therein:
yet they may give rise to heresies and errors." Cf. the German "mass book"
at Nuremberg, p. 112 n. 7.

102 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

confessors and virgins, and homilies and sermons of the saints,
tending to the reformation of Hfe, the disciphne of manners, the fear
of hell and the love of the heavenly country, — it is most useful for all
people, learned and unlearned, to have and read such books daily.
And if you are not willing to admit this, I will myself shew you in
writing the sayings of the doctors of holy Church, Augustine, Gregory,
Ambrose and Jerome, and of other orthodox teachers, that it is lawful
and very useful to have books of this kind.'

And he answered : ' If you produce from manuscripts the sayings
of doctors, we too shall produce the sayings of doctors to the con-
trary.'

Then I spake more plainly: ' My lord prior : as your lector publicly
preached before the people that they ought not to have German
books, so must he publicly revoke this: or else shall I arrange with
the lord bishop of Utrecht and his household, in the great chapter,
that neither you nor your lector shall preach any more in the diocese
of Utrecht.'

But the prior said : ' It seems to me then, that you have a com-
mission to do this from the bishop of Utrecht. Be at peace : for I will
arrange that our lector shall revoke those words.' And when for my
* part I wished to go to the lector, who was lying upon his bed, the prior
said: 'He is a very learned man.' To whom I answered: 'Therefore
I would the more gladly speak with him, that he might the better
understand his error.' Yet, at the petition of the prior and of the
brother whom I had with me, I did not go to the sick man forth-
with: because his prior promised me that he should revoke those
words.

Another time, when I was going from Deventer in a boat through
Yssel towards Zutphen, I questioned the men and women who were
sailing with me, what the friars preachers in Zutphen were wont to
preach. They answered :

• Our lector sometimes preached, that lay people ought not to have
books in German; but he revoked that in this summary fashion:
" You good people, when I preach the gospel to you, you forthwith
tell it askew to others. Now I spoke to you at another time in a ser-
mon about German books which the laity ought not to have, and I
noticed this point: that some women, or even men, sometimes lay
Germ.an writings beneath the altar cloth, so that mass may be read
over them, and when it is finished, they take away such writings,
and make with other people many incantations, divinations and
auguries. Now 1 forbade you to have and read such writings. But j^ou
may well and lawfully have and read good books and moral books." '
And the people in the boat who said this added, that tliey had been
greatly astonished at this, that he should have revoked what he said
in such a way, not knowing who had compelled him to it. But I,
hearing this, was well content at his recanting in this manner, because
there were two houses of sisters in that town which always read
German in refectory at table, while they were eating."

IV] THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE 103

Buscli's account of the matter shews the attitude of the
Brethren of the Common Life to bibhcal translations. They were
not primarily concerned with the spread of these, but of Dutch
devotional books: yet probably their attitude was chiefly in-
strumental in making orthodox opinion more favourable to
biblical translations at the end of the fifteenth century.

§ 2. In the period 1400-1526, however, the most eminent of
the brethren's contemporaries, and the most liberal of orthodox
reformers, remained hostile to bibhcal translations. This is most
interesting in the case of Jean Gerson, who was so definitely con-
vinced that they were mischievous, that he actually included a
proposal for their formal condemnation in his scheme of reform,
presented to the council of Constance. Gerson became bachelor
of theology in 1384, the year of Wychffe's death, and from 1395
onwards, when he became chancellor of the university of Paris,
he was regarded as the greatest of European scholars and the
chief champion of ecclesiastical reform. He was a leading spirit
in the council of Pisa, 1409, which deposed the rival popes, and
elected the Franciscan, Alexander V. There is some evidence
that the latter was connected hi some way with the practical
suppression of biblical translations in England^: but he lost
Gerson's support through his championship of the privileges of
his own order against the university of Paris. Gerson continued,
however, to write and preach that a general council should meet,
to heal the schism and reform abuses. When the council of
Constance met in 1415, Gerson attended as legate of the French
king, and representative of the Galhcan church; and his per-
sonahty and learning gave him an outstanding influence.
Though the council succeeded in healing the schism, and in
passing a certain number of canons dealing with reform, many
other suggestions for reform failed. Among them was that put
forward by Gerson in his tract On communion in both kinds,
where he stated that there were many people who wished that
the reading of scripture should be everywhere permitted. To
refute these, Gerson discussed the authority of the canonical
scriptures, and their manner of exposition, and then gave other
arguments against "the heretics" who were opposing him.

^ See Index and Appendix.

104 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

"Now this use of holy scripture by modern nien," he says, "as if
holy scripture should be believed in its bare text wnthout the help
of any interpretation or explanation, is a kind of use which is attended
by grave dangers and scandals.. . .Moreover, the errors of the Beg-
hards and the Poor Men of Lyons and the like have sprung from this
pestiferous root, and do daily increase: because there are many lay
people who have a translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue,
to the great prejudice and scandal of catholic truth, and it is proposed
in the scheme of reform that this should be abolished^."

Gerson's proposal was not embodied in a decree: but the
council passed one which shewed that it still regarded the better
education of the clergy, and the improvement of their instruction
of the laity, as the great aim, — not the encouragement of the use
of biblical translations. It confirmed a proposal of Gerson and
Pierre d'Ailly^, and enacted that, "to counteract the ignorance
of those priests who have already been promoted" (as opposed
to those still in training), short text-books should be written for
cathedrals and important collegiate churches, and should be
publicly read in synod, both in Latin and the vulgar tongue.
These should give the necessary instruction on the virtues and
vices, the creed, the sacraments, the form of confession, etc.

Also, in each of the said churches there ought to be a reader of
theology, who shall lecture on the second and third book of the
Sentences, or who shall take the material in the said books and shall
apply it shortly to the exposition and explanation of the epistles
and gospels, which are read in church in the course of the year^.

^ Tractatus contra haeresim de communione laicoriim sub utraque specie,
published at Constance in 1417. Gerson, Opera, Du Pin, Antwerp, 1706, i.
459. This tract is quoted by the Dominican friar, Martin Harney, in the
tract which he wrote against that of the Jansenist, Antoine Amauld, on the
subject of vernacular scriptures. Harney's learned treatise seeks to estab-
lish that the mediaeval Church was right in prohibiting biblical translations.
He says that at the council of Constance a certain scheme called the Reforma-
forium was drawn up, so that, inter alia, "the reading of holy scripture in the
vulgar tongue should be restrained, at least within due bounds." To prove
his statement he gives several quotations from Gerson's writings, "for his
single testimony in this matter is worth that of many men, even of many
credible witnesses : for he acted in the name of many others, he acted before
the whole council of Fathers, and it is obvious that he cannot have acted
thus through party zeal, or from any such motive." Harney, 185.

- Magniun oecumenicum constantiense concilium, V. d. Hardt, H., Helm-
stadt, 1700, tom. i. pars viii. p. 428, where the decree is coupled with
d'Ailly's name. It is given in Gerson's tract, De Reforniatione, in Concilia
Constantiensi, Opera, 11. 914: but the expedient had of course been in use
in many provinces in the fourteenth century. See pp. 141, 196.

^ For the complaint of a contemporary that the study of the sacred text

ivj GERSON 105

. Gerson explained his opposition to biblical translations also in
other treatises. In his tract Against idle curiosity, he said that

Presumptuous curiosity, and singularity, easily cause a schism in all
knowledge, and consequently destroy it. The building of the tower of
Babel gives us an example of this, for the division of languages ruined
and destroyed it: and even so, on the other hand, does unity of
language strengthen the building of the Church.. . .In addition, it
follows from the aforesaid points, that the translation of holy books,
of our Bible especially, is justly prohibited, except in the case of
moralisations and Bible histories. It is easy to find very clear reasons
for this^

He brought out the same point in a sermon, speaking of a certain
heretic, who was

deceived by a false understanding of scripture : even as there are many
other men who understand scripture according to their own private
opinion, and not according to the exposition of holy doctors, which
they know not, or are unwilling to understand and consider. And
therefore I take this as evidence, that it is most dangerous to give to
simple men, who are quite unlearned, books of the holy scripture
translated into French, because they may forthwith fall into many
errors by a false understanding^.

Here Gerson expressed the fundamental objection to biblical
translations by the best minds of his century: the translation of
the "bare text," unaccompanied by glosses to explain also the
secondary interpretations, was too dangerous.

"Even as some good might come," he wrote elsewhere, "of the good
and true translation of the Bible into French, if it were soberly under-
stood, even so, on the other hand, innumerable errors and evils would
arise if it were badly translated or presumptuously understood, con-
trary to the exposition of holy doctors. It would be better to be
completely ignorant of the matter: even as in medicine and similar
sciences it would be better to be completely ignorant than to know
little, or to know wrong^."

was neglected at the universities, cf. Nicholas de Clemanges, " I marvel that
the theologians of our time read so negligently the pages of the divine
Testaments." Gieseler, iv. 176.

^ Lectiones duae contya vanam curiositateni, Opera, i. 106. The last sen-
tence reads: Rursus sequitur ex praemissis prohibendam esse vulgarem
translationem librorum sacrorum, nostrae Bibliae praesertim, extra morali-
tatcs et historias.

' Harney, 188.

^ Decern considerationes contra ad^tlatores principum, consid. iv. and v.;
Harney, 189. Gerson wrote a tract, De sensu litterali sacrae scripturae et de
cansis errantium, which it is interesting to compare with Purvey's treatment

I06 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

A tract written* by a Carthusian, who died in 1470 adopted
the same point of view. Jean le Riche (loannes Divitis), a
Carthusian of Ghent, wrote among other theological works a
treatise entitled: Why it is not always profitable for worldly
people to have the books of holy scripture translated into the mother
tongue'^. The tract itself has perished, or exists only in an
unknown manuscript: but its contents can be inferred from
its title.

The attitude of fifteenth century orthodoxy in Germany can
also be inferred from the silence on the subject of biblical trans
lations of those churchmen most anxious for reform. Their
exhortations to the laity did not include advice to study the
Bible for themselves, except in a few cases between 1500 and the
Reformation. The teaching of Geiler of Ka3'sersberg was typical
of the most liberal and devout opinion of his time, and he urged,
as Gerson might have done, the careful instruction of the laity
in holy scripture at the hands of the priest, and pronounced
against the publication of German Bibles. He himself preached
long and eloquently at Strassburg, no doubt basing his sermons
'on the gospel for the day; and, when he occasionally exhorted
the readers of his treatises to be diligent in gaining a knowledge
of holy scripture, it was almost certainly this means which he

of the same subject in the preface to his version. Gerson states that, " there
is opposition to the truth, in England, in Scotland, in the university of
Prague, and in Germany, and even, shameful as it is to admit it, in France.
. . . And these sowers of heresy, and enemies of truth (truth which they
know, or should know, since they call themselves catholics), claim that
their sayings are founded upon holy scripture, and on its literal sense;
and they say that they follow and recognise scripture only, and reject
and despise other constitutions and writings." Therefore he proposes to
consider what the literal sense of holy scripture is, and how it is to be inves-
tigated and held: and, like Purvey, cites the "seven rules of Ticonius,"
which had lately been brought into prominence by Nicholas de Lyra, in his
commentary on the biblical text. (See p. 181.) Gerson then again mentions
that his heretical opponents are to be found in England, "have destroyed
the university of Prague, and have even reached Scotland." Opera, 1. 1-7.
Cf. other discourses on the four senses of scripture, 11. 350, 365; and his
sermon before the council of Constance, inviting the fathers to condemn
many errors, including those of Wycliffe and Hus, "which cannot be con-
demned merely by an appeal to the bare text of scripture, without reference
to the expositions of the doctors"; 11. 278.

^ Quo pacta secularibus non semper conducant libri sacrae scripturae
materno idiomate translati; cf. Illustrium sacri Cartusiensis ordinis scriptorum
catalogus, Petreius, T., ed. Miraeus, D. A., Cologne, 1609, 161.

IVJ GEIIER OF KAYSERSBERG 107

had in mind, in the case of lay people. In his book on the
Christian Pilgrimage, he drew an exact parallel between the dutj'
of receiving at the priest's hand the sacrament of the altar and
the word of God.

Eliaswas fed with the bread of angels, and with water fromapitcher.
And thou, O Pilgrim, when thou art weary and failing, refresh thyself
. . .by receiving bread,. . .the sacrament of the Eucharist, the body
of the Lord,. . .and drink from the pitcher the water of heavenly
wisdom springing forth to everlasting life: that is, the word of God J
which water . . . thou shaltfind in the pitcher of holy scripture. . . . More-
over, see that thou drink as from a pitcher of the water of the word
of God, only as given thee by the angel, and according to his advice.
For there are people who drink of that water of scripture at will
and without measure, and not from the hands of the angels of God,
who are the priests of the Church, from whose mouth they should
acquire the law : but they presume to understand them by their own
proper intelligence, like the Waldensians, the Brethren of the Free
Spirit, the Bohemians, and other heretics^.

In some of his sermons Geiler spoke even more plainly on the
dangers to which the laity were exposed through the publication
of German Bibles:

It is dangerous to put knives into children's hands, for them to
cut bread with themselves, for they may cut themselves. So also
holy scripture, which contains the bread of God, should be read and
explained by such as are already far advanced in knowledge and
experience, and will set forth the undoubted meaning. For inexperi-
enced people will easily take harm from their reading. . . .We read the
Bible and other scriptures, and do not understand. We have not the
skill to read intelligently and according to the true Christian meaning.
It is certainly a foolish thing that the Bible is printed in German,
for one must understand it quite otherwise than it is written, to do it
justice. [A reference to the need of understanding not only the literal,
but also the "moral," "allegorical" and "anagogical meaning."] If
you have already a book on fencing from which to learn to fight,
you cannot fight therewith, till you have learned from a fencing-

^ The Ckristenbilgerschaft, or Peregrinus, quoted by L. Dacheux in Jean
Geiler de Kaysersberg, 1478-1510, Paris, 1876, 226 and 229. This interesting
study overstresses the extent to which biblical knowledge was " widespread "
in the fifteenth century: see p. 2. Janssen also, in Gesch. des deuischen
Volkes, 1881, I. 608, is not justified in representing Geiler and S. Brandt
as solitary individuals who preached against translations out of excess
of paternal solicitude for their flocks : Geiler's pronouncements against the
dangers of lay Bible reading are exactly in line with the best mediaeval
thought, from Gregory VII to the Reformation.

I08 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

4
master. If you have already a cobbler's knife, and have leather ready,
and a needle and thread, you still cannot make a shoe, until you have
learned. Therefore, if you wish to read the Bible, beware of falling
into error ^.

'/ Geiler's attitude is noteworthy, because he lived till 1510,
when printed German Bibles had become fairly common, and
because he was not a conservative zealot, but a great preacher
of reform. Two manuals had already, in 1508 and 1509, begun
to recommend the laity to read the Bible in a spirit of piety and
humility: but Geiler retained the normal mediaeval fear that
such a course was too dangerous.

It is doubtful if Geiler's friend, Sebastian Brandt, viewed the
printed German Bibles with much more favour, though he men-
tioned that Hebrew, Slavonic and Bohemian versions existed^.
Brandt's famous satirical poem, the Ship of Fools, was published
first in German in 1494, and achieved an enormous popularity.
It was at once translated into Latin, Dutch, English and French,
parts of it were sometimes preached from the pulpit, and Geiler
delivered pubhc lectures upon it-''. The section "On the con-
tempt and despising of holy scripture," lamented that though
"All lands now are full of holy writ,. . .the Bible, the teaching
of the holy fathers, and many another similar book, . . . yet no
one improves himself therewith*," and throughout the section
Brandt emphasised the same point. The English verse trans-
lation of 1509 lamented that the world was full of:

Such as despiseth ancient scripture,
WTiich proved is of great authority,
And hath no pleasure, felicity or cure
Of godly Prophets which wrote of verity :
A fool he is, for his most felicity
Is to believe the tales of an old wife.
Rather than the doctrine of eternal life^.

^ "Es ist fast ein bosz Ding das man die bibel zu teiitsch triickt, wen
man musz sye gar vil anders verston weder es do stot, will man im echter
rechtthun," Christlichen Bilgerschaft, Bale, 151 1, p. 127, quoted J. Kehrein,
Zur Geschichte der deuischen Bibeliibersetzung vor Luther, Stuttgart, 1851,
and Janssen, J., Gesch. des deuischen Volkes, 1881, i. 609.

* Dacheux, 226.

3 The Ship of Fools, iranslaied by Alexander Barclay, ed. Jamieson, T. H.,
Edinburgh, 1874, introd.

* Dacheux, Ixxvi.

* Barclay, i. 72.

IV] SEBASTIAN BRANDT 109

But though Brandt lamented the neglect of scripture, it is
doubtful if he would have recommended the unrestricted use of
translations, for in his section on "Heretics," he is much of his
friend Geiler's opinion as to the danger of false interpretations.
Heretics are:

False prophets, not following the right.
Which with false hearts, imperfect of credence.
Not duly worship the law of God almight,
Nor His holy doctrine with worthy reverence :
And other such as vary the true sense
Of Goddis law, expounding other wise
Than it in the text clear and plainly lies^.

They holy scriptures rehearse much other wise
Than the Holy Ghost them uttered first of all^.

Thus there is a good deal of evidence that cathohc reforming /
opinion, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was much the ;
same as that of Gerson at the beginning of the fifteenth.

§ 3. BibHcal translations were used in women's convents in
the fifteenth century more freely than elsewhere, because in such
cases they were always used under the direction of the warden or
confessor of the house. A fifteenth century Dutch manuscript
shews the closeness of this supervision : the sister who had charge
of the books was to see that

H anything in the book appeared to be false, it should be brought
before the rector of the house for him to oversee, before it is allowed
to be commonly used by the sisters. . . .Great care is to be taken, not
to lend books to outside people without the permission of the rector. . . .
Uncommon books are not to be read in refectory till the rector has

first seen that their contents are good and profitable Books are

not to be lent to ignorant people ^.

Men's convents occasionally contained bibUcal translations, but

1 Barclay, n. 225.

- Id. u. 226. Cf., for quotations from the Narrenschiff, Janssen, ed. 1881,
I. 609. The poem does notice the danger to faith through misinterpretation
of scripture, and in such a manner as to render it very hkely that Brandt
disapproved of the printed German Bibles; but the main emphasis in the
matter is that the world is full of holy books, which all can read, and yet
men do not reform their manners.

3 Nederlandisch Prosa, van de deriiende tot de achtiende eeuw, ed. V[loten].
J. H., Amsterdam, 1851, i. 297-9.

no BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

there is much more evidence for their use in women's convents^,
and especially in Holland. Some Dutch convents used German
gospel books from 1400 onwards: and between 1450 and 1526 it
is quite possible that their use was general, not only in the Nether-
lands, but in Germany. The evidence for this has, however, been
very much exaggerated. Extraordinarily few catalogues of
sisters' libraries, compared to those of men's houses, have come
down to us. No English nunnery catalogue, for instance, is
known, while only one Dutch and one German one are printed
and accessible ; which, in view of the very numerous survivals of
those of men's houses, must shew that the sisters' libraries were
relatively infrequent and unimportant. Probably there were
many of the less well-governed and well-instructed houses in
which very little reading was done at all : and others where the
reading was confined to the vernacular sermons, saints' lives,
and books of vices and virtues, which form the bulk of the two
catalogues which are known to us. The evidence is too slight
for certainty, and the diffusion of vernacular Bibles has been
overestimated by the mistaken idea that all the items recorded
in fifteenth century Dutch catalogues were themselves in Dutch^:

1 Isaac de Long, after his extensive search for Dutch biblical MSS., stated
that more biblical MSS. came from women's convents than from men's
(Boekzaal, 335, 336). He considered that surprisingly few examples existed,
and that the nuns could have used them little: but, actually, biblical MSS.
from the nunneries of other countries are fewer than from Dutch ones.
W. Moll, Kerkengeschiedenis van Nederland voor de Hervorming, ii^. 334,
says that: " We can say very little about the distribution of our old biblical
translations. As to their use by lay people [sic], they were apparently
read most in communities of women, in the houses of Beguines, or Sisters
of the Common Life; and also in communities of men, which included besides
the monks unlettered lay brothers, oblates, etc. It is probable that they
existed in many, if not in all convents, from the middle of the fifteenth
century, either wholly or in part, for the manuscripts which are found in our
public or private libraries give manifold internal evidence of a monastic
source." Moll's statement, however, apphes to the period, post 1450, when
the labours of the Brethren of the Common Life had been largely successful :
and does not justify' a general assertion that German nunneries freely used
biblical translations " in the middle ages"; also, his statement was probablj'
partly due to a misunderstanding of the one nunnery catalogue known to
him: see p. 113, n. 5.

- Fifteenth century catalogues, whether of the libraries of noblemen,
monasteries or princes, were often written in the vernacular, — French,
German, English, Dutch, etc. But it is generally quite clear that the bulk
of the books, where the language is not stated, were in Latin, and not in the
vernacular in which the catalogue was written. The custom, in writing

ivj NUNNERY CATALOGUES: NUREMBERG ill

but nevertheless, there is good ground to believe that the
majority of biblical translations used by the orthodox were
written for use in houses of women.

The earliest known nunnery catalogue is that of the Dominican
nuns of Nuremberg, written between 1456 and 1469. The con-
vent was one of those which prized the works of Eckhart and
the early Gottesfreunde, and was directed by the Dominican
friars who were their successors. It had been reformed shortly
before the making of the catalogue; and, from the size of the
library, and the information given in the catalogue about the
copying of manuscripts by the nuns, it must have been one of
the most learned in Germany. The nuns were drawn from the
upper burgher or noble class, and the Dominican rule for nuns,
as well as for friars, emphasised the duty of study; we should
expect therefore to find Dominican nuns among the best edu-
cated of the day. We have both the catalogue of their librar}^
and an interesting note-book of the volumes which were read in
refectory throughout the year. The library catalogue includes
350 volumes^, and a careful note is made as to how each book

a catalogue in Latin, was to leave the language unspecified except in the case
of vernacular books, and in most cases this earlier custom seems to have
been followed when catalogues came to be written in the vernacular. Such
a catalogue frequently states: "this book is written in Romance, or in
German, or in Dutch " : and in such a catalogue, when the language of certain
items .i. carefully specified, it is much safer to conclude that the other items
are in Latin, especially when no translations of such works are known to have
existed. Again, if, in such a catalogue, a number of works of the same class
are given, and the language of the earlier volumes is not given, while it is
stated that the last is "in German " or " in French," it is fairly safe to think
that the unspecified ones are in Latin; because it was customar}' in Latin
catalogues thus to append the vernacular copies at the end of the section.
The conclusion is not positive, but, in dealing with an otherwise carefully
made catalogue, it is fairly safe to assume that some few items would not
have been stated to be "in Dutch" or " in German," if all the manuscripts
had been in Dutch or in German. For catalogues written in German, whose
contents are undoubtedly Latin books, cf. especially Gottlieb, 51 (the chapel
of S. Peter at Lucerne); 56 (the spital of the Holy Ghost), where the books
are all liturgical; 28 (the Kreuzkirche) ; 25 (the EHzabethenkirche),
1483. For French catalogues of books mainly in Latin see Gottlieb, 97
(Pierre Cardonnel); loi (Clairvaux) ; and lists on pp. 102, 124-6, 134-5.

1 Cod. Musei Germanici, Nuremberg, Cent. vii. 79, flf. 86-146: Item die
hernach geschrieben puecher hat der Convent hie zii sant Kathereyn zu Niirn-
verg prediger ordens, see Gottlieb, 55, no. 131. Jostes printed this most inter-
esting catalogue in Meister Eckhart und seine Jiivger, Collectanea Friburgen-
sia, fasc. iv. (1895), pp. 113-; but confuses his account of it by consider-
ing it as the Ust of refectory reading-books (cf. p. xxiii). The list of refectory

112 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

was obtained: whether it was brought by a sister on admission,
copied by one of the sisters, or given by a benefactor. It is
written in German, and has been cited as if it recorded a collec-
tion of German manuscripts, containing very numerous German
biblical translations^; but this is clearly a mistake. It is incon-
ceivable that a Dominican convent would have possessed 350
German manuscripts, including a set of " psalters for the choir 2,"
and no single volume in Latin, liturgical or otherwise. Moreover,
26 manuscripts are specified as being in German, or as "in
Latin and German " ; and some are specified as being in " Nether-
landish," or "in the speech of the Netherlands^." The biblical
and gospel books, as in all catalogues, are placed at the beginning
of the first section. The language of the first volumes is not given;
the last of the biblical books, however, are a psalter in German,
and an " Epistle, gospel, and Nicodemus-gospel, and the psalter,
the one verse Latin and the other verse German*." In all prob-
ability, it was only the psalter in this latter volume which had
one verse Latin and one German; thus no biblical book except
the psalter is stated as being in German at all. The 26 German
books mentioned in the catalogue included one book of "sins,"
— a discourse on the ten commandments, seven mortal sins'*, etc.
— one German psalter, two Latin and German psalters, seven
books of sermons^, one "missal " (or, perhaps, antiphoner), for
Advent and Lent', a tract of S. Augustine, the Dominican Rule

reading-books, from which he prints an extract, is actually in Cod. Musei
Germanici zu Nximberg, Cent. vii. 92, ff. 45-: see Gottlieb, 55, no. 132.
It would have been most interesting had Jostes printed this list also, only
the title and the first item of which are printed in Gottlieb. As it is, his
article does not refer to it, but only to the list of extracts and page references
which immediately precedes it. Whether the library catalogue and the
refectory lists are in separate MSS. (Cent. vii. 79 and Cent. vii. 92), or are
bound together, as Jostes implies, I am unable to ascertain.

1 Jostes, Meister Eckhart, p. xxiv, and HJ, xv. (1894), 771; xviii. (1897),
133, followed by Mandonnet in V, 11. 1470, who states that the Dominican-
esses had 15 biblical books, 1 1 pericopes, and 5 gospel harmonies, in German.

^ Meister Eckhart, 119: section C of the catalogue contains 9 psalters,
language unspecified, and the tenth and last is a German psalter.

3 Id. 138, no. IX. and 136, no. xxxi.

* Id. 119, nos. X., XI.

' Id. II J, no. VI.

« Including no. xxiv. p. 148: a volume of sermons preached by the father
confessor of the house, and written out by the sisters.

' Id. 122, no. XVII.: described as "die mesz" in German for Advent and
Lent, and beginning. Ad te levavi. Possibly an antiphoner or a pericope: the

IV] NUNNERY CATALOGUES: DELFT 113

in German, two copies of the Rule in German and Latin^, five
books of prayers, two of hymns, two Lives of our Lady, and a
tract on a psalm 2.

The convent also possessed some German books used specially
for reading in refectory : though library books were also used for
this purpose. Another manuscript gives a "note book of what
shall be read at dinner and at collation throughout the whole
year, so that it can be found indicated for every week, and day,
and festival, what ought to be read therein^." The list gives
also the library numbers of the books, and the pages which are
to be read, and the notice ends: "Also, after the note-book, the
books are written down which are described in the note-book."
This list (which begins with Suso's book of the Eternal wisdom,
in German*) has not been printed in full. On Christmas Eve
the reading was to be the "prophecy and epistle and gospel for
the third mass," or "from the lessons and from the three masses
on Christmas Day " : perhaps the German translation of the
epistles and gospels, etc., which they were about to hear in Latin,
or perhaps German discourses upon them.

The other nunnery catalogue is that of the Franciscan ter-
tiaries at Delft. This community was founded through the in-
fluence of the Brethren of the Common Life, and was continu-
ously directed by them 5. It was an offshoot of the Franciscan

word "mesz" is used loosely elsewhere, in the notice about the refectory
reading-books, where the reading for Christmas Eve at dinner is to be,
"the third mass and the prophecy and epistle and gospel." The only parts
of the Missal which could have been read in refectory would have been the
epistle and gospel: actually, there is no "prophecy" or "lesson" or O. Test,
passage in the three masses for Christmas Day; and the prayers from the
missal would not, of course, have been read. Similarly, it is very doubtful
if this MS. was a complete German missal, see p. loi.

^ Metster Eckhart, 132, no.xv.; 131, no. i.; 132, no. xvii.; there were also
many copies of the Rule in Latin.

* These 26 MSS. were, from the incipit or the description, certainly in
German: possibly other volumes of sermons, prayers, etc., were also in
German. Dr M. R. James, however, who has kindly looked through these
two nunnerj' catalogues for me (see n. 5), considers that the majority of the
MSS., where the language is not specified, were in Latin, and that the biblical
books at the beginning of the catalogue were certainly in Latin.

^ See p. Ill, n. i; Gottlieb, 55, Meister Eckhart, 114.
^ Gottlieb, 55, no. 132.

* De Boekerij van het St. Barbara-Kloster te Delft, in de tweede helft der
vijftiende eeuw, Moll, W. ; printed in Kerkhistorisch Archie/, verzameld dour
N. C. Kist en W. Moll, Amsterdam, 1866; deel 4, 213-28.

D.W. B. S

114 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

tertiaries of S. Agatha at Utrecht, with which house Gerard
Groot was himself connected; the sister of S. Agatha's who had
charge of the books was "to take most great and especial care,
by the advice of the director, that books written either in Latin
or in the vulgar tongue, should be catholic and well translated,
and shall use no profane or abusive manner of speech^ " ; so that
it is evident that the mother house had sisters sufficiently
educated to read Latin, and a director who allowed them to
read Dutch. This is interesting, because the tertiaries at Delft
and Utrecht came probably from a lower social class than the
Dominicanesses at Nuremberg, and it has been questioned
whether they could read Latin books at alP. The catalogue is
headed : These are the study-hooks which belong to the library of the
Convent of S. Barbara in Delft; it is written in Dutch, includes
109 manuscripts, and dates from the second half of the fifteenth
century. It is difficult to say M'ith certaint}?^ in this case whether
the majority of the books were in Dutch or Latin : the connexion
with the Brethren of the Common Life, and the social class of the
tertiaries, make it much more likely than in the case of the
Nuremberg convent that most of the books were in Dutch. The
list begins with biblical books, of which there are seven ^ : one of
these is stated to be a Flemish gospel book, which renders it
most Ukely that the others were in Latin. The convent would
almost certainly have possessed a few Latin biblical books for
study: and it would be very probable that they should have had
in Latin four gospel books, glossed and unglossed, the epistles
of S. Paul glossed, part of the Canticles : and in Dutch, a gospel
book. Most of the other books were probably in Dutch.

These two catalogues shew a marked difference in character
from those of men's convents. They are of course smaller, do

1 Moll, 220; the last words recall the determination of 1398, see p. 90.

- Id. 230; Moll's belief that the majority of the MSS. were in Dutch rests
upon the belief that a knowledge of Latin was very unusual at the mother
house at Utrecht. Busch, however, expressly states that some of "our
sisters" (those directed by the brethren), were good Latinists: Busch, 576.
He mentions, however, four houses of Augustinian nuns, to whom he was
sent to introduce reform, who said the hours of our Lady in German, in
choir: id. 549. Cf. Erasmus's statement on the subject, p. 116.

3 Moll, 224; I. Gospels and epistles; 2. Gospels with concordances, two
copies; 3. " Een vlaems ewangeUboc"; 4. S. John's gospel, with the exposi-
tion; 5. Gospel of Nicodemus; 6. S. Paul's epistles, glossed; 10. Three pieces
from the Canticles.

IV] NUNS AND VERNACULAR BIBLES 115

not contain a complete gloss on the Vulgate, or glosses on the
separate biblical books, and are almost completely lacking in
patristic works. They have relatively many more sermons, pious
manuals, and books of mystical devotion, and a larger proportion
of vernacular books ^.

Besides these catalogues, another exists, in manuscript only,
of the women's cloister at Wonnenstein, in 1498 -; and, among
the list of biblical manuscripts and plenaries quoted by Le Long,
there are eight which came from nunneries. Dutch Bible his-
tories, or translations of Peter Comestor, were owned in the
fifteenth century by the nuns of S. Margaret at Haarlem; the
Franciscan tertiaries of the convent of Sion in Liere, 1412; and
the nuns of S. Agnes without the walls at Nymwegen, in 1453^.
The convent of S. Ursula at Enkhuysen owned the four gospels,
or a gospel harmony; and a nun of the canonesses regular of
Haarlem near Syl, — sister Mary, the daughter of Jacob William-
son of Dordrecht, — copied the Epistles and Acts in 1447. The

^ Other books of interest in the Nuremberg catalogue are those in section
D, p. iig, devoted to gospel harmonies, lives of our Lord, the "Bible his-
tory" of P. Comestor, etc.; section B, sermons, including those of Eckhart
and Tauler; the large section of "confession books"; an "Abcdarius";
the Eternal Wisdom ; the Vent sancte and Veni creator in German; " a treatise
against the heretical Waldensians " ; several Imitations; many saints' lives,
etc. The Delft catalogue includes the Revelations of Mechthild ; the Passionate
for summer and winter; Cassian's Collations; tracts from SS. Bernard,
Augustine, etc.; lives of SS. Francis, Barbara, etc.; confession books; a life
of our Lord; Ruysbroeck, — the reading of whose treatises would not have
been allowed to quite uneducated people; letters of Gerard Groot; a work of
Gerard Zerbolt; Sydrach, S. Lydwin of Schiedam's book, etc.; but no book
of medicine, like the Nuremberg catalogue. Dutch gospel harmonies, or
lives of our Lord, were frequent in convents : cf . that printed by J . Bergsma,
De levens van Jesus in het middelnederlandsch, Leyden, 1896, in the Bibliothek
van middelnederlandsche Letter kunde; a harmony founded on that of Victor
of Capua. The translator says in his preface : "I greet in our dear Lord God,
Jesus Christ, all those who shall read this book, and hear it read, and as^c
them to pray for me. One of my dear friends prayed me, on a certain time,
that I would translate the gospel out of Latin into the Dutch language:
and so I made one fair history out of the texts of the four gospels of the life
of our Lord Jesus Christ, from the time that He was conceived and born
of the holy maiden, our Lady, till that time that He sent His holj' Spirit to
His disciples" ; but actually the text follows Victor of Capua pretty closely,
and quotes from his preface. Both the Nuremberg nuns and the Delft ter-
tiaries studied similar Lives, or Gospel Harmonies more than the actual text
of the gospel.

- Cloister library at S. Gallen, MS. 973, 3. 1-9; cf. GottUeb, 83.

' Boekzaal, 249, 250; cf., for the following examples, pp. 277, 286, 287,
291, 294; for gospels of two other Dutch nunneries, Addit. 26659, 26631.

8-2

Il6 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

seven canonical epistles and the Apocatypse, written in 1399,
was owned then or later by the nuns of S. Denis in Amsterdam.
The nunnery at Landen had a glossed plenary, and the convent
of S. Ursula at Haarlem another; while the nuns of Brunteshusen
had three glossed plenaries in the last half of the fifteenth cen-
tury^. The number is greater than those known to have be-
longed to men's houses^, and interesting to compare with the
single English example, — the manuscript given to Sion in 1517
by lady Danvers. It is also greater than that of biblical trans-
lations proved to belong to lay people at the time: and, together
with the other evidence, shews that the chief readers of the
German Bible in manuscript were the nuns and tertiaries,
especially in the Netherlands^.

Walther considered it likely that some of the names of scribes
or owners on the German manuscript Bibles he examined were
those of laymen^, though he was unable to identify them with
certainty. There is one marked difference, however, between
the German manuscripts of which he speaks, and the English
biblical manuscripts, — both very numerous groups. The German
manuscripts give the scribe's name in 19 cases : no English biblical
manuscript has one at all, although the}^ are very frequently
found in contemporary manuscripts of a different class. The

^ Jostes, Die Waldenser und die vorlutherische deutsche Bibeluhersetzung,
Miinster, 1885, 25.

^ The "library of the order at Wittenberg" in 1434 was catalogued in
German as having 31 books, Gottlieb, 83; see Kern, 397, for late fourteenth
century catalogue of Roodekloster (Rubea Vallis, in the Netherlands),
enumerating 22 Dutch books belonging to the house, the first of which
was a gospel book, Gottlieb, 261. The four gospels were copied in 1472 bj'
brother Ghysbert Beynop, for the canons regular of Vredendal, near
Utrecht; and two houses of the Brethren of the Common Life had Dutch
Bibles, — Hem, near Schoonhoven, and Gouda; cf. Boekzaal, 278, 333, 335;
of. also p. 99, supra.

' Erasmus, writing in defence of vernacular Bibles, says : " In many places
there are religious, both men and women, who have the sacred books
translated into the vulgar tongue, and read them, and even recite them in
chapels, with the connivance of the bishop." {Opera, 1706, ix. 786.)

^ Walther, 725. A MS. containing the five Wisdom books of the O.T. in
German, written 1465, although it does not give the translator's or reviser's
name, says in a prologue: " Because all lay people do not understand Latin,
therefore I will translate these books out of Latin into German"; id. 386.
Hans Zattelin, of Memingen, id. 130, who in 1481 ordered a complete
German Bible to be written by Martin Huber, the schoolmaster of the place,
was probably a layman; the copy was made from, or corrected from, one of
the early printed Bibles.

IV] EARLY PRINTED BIBLES II7

19 German scribes were all men: there is no reason to be sur-
prised at this (though it might have been natural enough to find
some sisters' names among them), for it was of course exceedingly
common in the fifteenth century for convents to get manuscripts
written for them by professional scribes^, and some of these
books may have been for conventual use. The presence of so
large a number of scribes' names reflects the greater security in
Germany for the writers of such translations.

§ 4. The first German Bible was printed in 1466. There is no
doubt that it and its successors were derived, as far as the New
Testament is concerned, from the original of the above men-
tioned manuscript of about 1400 at Tepl: but there has been
much discussion as to intermediate editors, and as to the trans-
lators of the Old Testament. During the period of about 1400-
1466, a complete translation of the Bible had been made, or
older partial translations had been merged in a complete Ger-
man Bible : for it is not thought likely that the printers of 1466
translated any part themselves, though they may have made
verbal changes.

The three earliest manuscripts which contain portions of this
text are, as has been mentioned above, those of Tepl, Freiberg
and WolfenbiitteP, the latter containing most of the Old Testa-
ment. Parts of the same Old Testament text are also contained
in a Nuremberg manuscript^ of about 1450; and this manuscript
is connected with the name of a Dominican translator or reviser,
John Rellach. One or two passages incorporated between the
books of the Old Testament * give certain details concerning the
circumstances which led Rellach, who belonged to a probably
Dominican convent in Constance, to undertake the work. The
manuscript is confusing: it contains translations of Joshua,

1 Cf. Bibliom. 28-31.

- For minute analyses of these and other German bibhcal MSS., see
Walther.

3 StadtbibHothek, Solgersche Bibl., :\IS. N. 16: cf. Walther, 147.

* For details, see Walther, 148-54. For the theory that Rellach was the
original translator of the text used by the early printed editions (which is,
however, discredited owing to the existence of the text in earlier MSS.) see
]ostes, Die Waldenserbibeln und Meister Johavnes Rellach, HJ, xv. (1894),
771-95 ; XVIII. (1897), I33~45. ^^d the controversial literature which it
occasioned, in the bibliography, HH, iii. 65. For the weak point in Jostes'
argument, the dating of the pre-Rellach bibhcal MSS., see HJ, xv. 781.

Il8 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

Judges, Ruth^, and the three books which follow them in the
Vulgate: and intervening passages from different scribes or
translators. The preface to the book of Joshua, careless^
copied so that Jerome's preface is confused with the trans-
lator's, is that of a layman of the Gottesfreunde type, with a
strong prejudice against highly-learned ecclesiastics. If another
extract in the same manuscript is his work, as it certainly is in
his style, he possessed a special enemy, whose varied and apos-
tate career he describes. There are also passages about Rellach
by a fellow-student, one possibly by Rellach himself, and one by
a scribe who describes himself as "Peter Zarter, cathedrahs
[magister]," dated 1471. The ascription to Rellach of the preface
by the earlier translator has led to confusion^, but the mistake
is now clear.

The preface of the translator of Joshua, Judges and Ruth is
found in two other manuscripts 3, both earUer than that of
Nuremberg: and the text is that of the Wolfenbiittel Old Testa-
ment. The preface is in a south German dialect, and begins*:

This is a foreword against him, who is opposed to the German
writing, which is, nevertheless, useful and profitable for men's souls.
My enemies have up till now done violence to their own conscience,
because they have till now been silent as regards my plan to translate
the holy gospel^ into German. Now however they have taken a
different stand, inspired by foolish pride, and they bring forward
foolish counsels, and say :

" But what shall we [clergy] now preach, when [lay] men read and
listen to the holy scriptures in the German tongue in their rooms and
houses? "

Him^ will I answer from holy scripture, until it is again necessary
that we should meet. Now mark that they have objected to me with
the more pride, because they think that they themselves excel in
holy scripture, and have somewhat noised this abroad : and would that
their knowledge were less than it is ! For no one accuses the perfect
of knowledge, and withholds them from preaching, if they read and
strive diligently to strengthen faithful Christians in the word of God.

1 Walther, 147; HJ, xv. 777-9; see supra, p. 79.

- Jostes' articles fail to recognise the distinction.

3 Vienna MSS. 2845, 3063: see HJ, xv. 777.

* Id. 777-9; Walther, 147-52.

5 Which would seem to shew that the tract was originally written in
connexion with some New Testament translation.

« The author, or the careless scribe, continually changes from the singu-
lar to the plural, with respect to his enemies.

IV] RELLACH AND THE GOTTESFREUND TRANSLATOR IIQ

Woe to you who call good evil, and evil good: as they do, who in their
pride contradict what learned priests and blessed laymen praise and
call good. It is through pride that these unlearned philosophers and
their followers contradict with their subtlety, and fight against, the
righteous truth: that is, they fight against the holy scriptures and
hinder the spread of their revealing^. . . .

And my proud enemies, set about with highmindedness, have held
forth before lords and learned people, desiring to gain their respect :
but thus is their deep folly the more fully known to the people, who
before knew it not. For while they were wisely silent, they were
esteemed prudent and well-learned. .. .And now they hotly attack
my fitness to deal with the lore of holy scripture : whereof I have good
hope towards God that they shall be confounded and put to silence.
And now they suggest from pride that I am too poor a scholar for
this matter, because I have not been in great places of learning^. And
that is true ! But the Holy Ghost supplies by His grace what is lacking
in me, and it is also well supplied by the help and counsel of learned
people. For I have known many a man, who has been at places of
learning, and returned as ignorant as he went, unless it be that he has
gained patrons, or learned how to find Easter ^i for the knowledge of
holy writ is neglected. For the truly learned wUlingly hear and dili-
gently^ learn, and gain true knowledge in their owti home, when they
ponder what in universities is counted worthless. For it is quite
obvious that there are certain simple lay people who thoroughly and
perfectly understand holy scripture, in all its parts : even as there are
some, who think they know what they have never learned.

The preface to the book of Joshua ^ perhaps describes the same
opponent whom the translator wished to meet again :

" My enemy," he says, " is an apostate monk, who has gone from one
order to another, and now is not living under a rule at all : he has been
an Augustinian, ... a parish priest and a Benedictine : no faith is to be
placed in such a man. My lord the bishop of Eichstadt has denounced
him, and exhorted him to return to his cloister."

Both passages, in their denunciation of worldly ecclesiastics who

1 Offenbarung : translation. For a very similar attack by a Friend of God
on learned prelates and "grossen Pfaffen," see the Buck von geistlicher Ar-
muth, Denifle, H. S., i8o. Denifle has shewn that the book is not Tauler's,
but earlier in date.

2 Hohen schulen. The term would signify primarily universities, but might
include episcopal theological schools, or Dominican "studia sollemnia."
The statement that the writer had not been to "hohen schulen" tells
strongly against Jostes' theory that this preface is by the Dominican
Rellach, which is untenable on other grounds.

* "Di meisterUche goldyne czal": probably a punning reference to the
"golden number" for determining Easter.

* Printed HJ, xv. 785-6.

120 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

seek to prevent the spread of biblical translations, deny the
right of laymen to make them, and hinder the laity from using
them, resemble the tract of Nicholas of Bale against the worldly
prelates who "say that German books are harmful to Chris-
tianity^."

The other abstracts deal with " the master of this book," John
Rellach. They state that when the news was brought to Rome
of the fall of Constantinople, 1453, "we students" were dis-
ma3'ed and sad, and especially after the eloquent sermon of
Leonard of Chios, bishop of Mitylene, describing it 2. John
Rellach, however, declared that S. Peter's ship should never
founder: and declared that he would translate the Vulgate into
German, till the knowledge of it should be so spread that the
Church should be compensated for the loss of the Greek biblical
manuscripts. He was ordered, however, to preach the crusade
against the Turks, which delayed his plan. Moreover, he himself
probably regarded it as perilous, since he answered those who
twitted him for delay "that a prophet was a very different
person from a commentator^." He himself describes his travels
in another manuscript * : they took him from Rome to Constance,
Mainz, Fulda, Marburg, Norway and Finland. He visited S.
Bridget's monastery of Vadstena, saw the book of her revela-
tions, and was probably encouraged in his scheme of translation
by the favour of the Brigittines for such works. He had begun
making an index of the contents of the biblical books, to help
the uninstructed laity, in 1450^; and, after his return from his
travels, he translated Joshua, Judges and Ruth, or revised an
earlier translation, — again shewing by his reply to his friends
that he considered the action risky ^. He is called the "master "

^ See p. 80.

* Walther, 151; HJ, xv. 782.

3 Id. 784 : " Es ist ain ander ding ze sein ain prophet, und ist noch ain ander
ding ain tolmetsch."

* Printed HJ, xv. 793-5-
5 Walther, 151.

* HJ, XV. 795. During his travels "the students" had begun the work of
translation in Strassburg, Bale, Speyer and Worms: they asked Rellach,
"Master, where is that plan of yours?" To which he answered that the
" lamb should become the lion, and that the soldier in arms never proclaims
his own valour," — meaning apparently, that he had not thought it prudent
as yet to speak openly of his plans; he then set to work to translate the book
of ^Joshua (using actually an older text).

IV] THE 1480 COLOGNE BIBLE I2X

(owner or translator) of this book in one or two later notices:
and as late as 1471 Peter Zarter thought it adv-isable to state
in a note, that the "master of this book " considered Bible study
good and profitable for the laity : though he was perhaps quoting,
not Rellach, but the preface of the earher translator embedded
in the manuscript. However little original translation was
actually due to Rellach, the manuscript shews that there was
in 1453 a Swiss Dominican who was anxious to promote the
spread of biblical translations.

Between 1466 and 1522, the date of the printing of Luther'^
New Testament, eighteen editions of the German Bible were
printed, fourteen in German, four in Dutch ^. The publisher of
the earliest edition was Mentel of Strassburg-, of whom we know
little, except that he was in favour at the court of the emperor
Frederick III, so that no suspicion of heresy attaches to him.
The other edition of most interest for the question of the lawful-
ness of the use of translations is that of Cologne, 14S0, which
has an interesting preface ^^ This states that highly learned
masters of the schools

read and use the translations of S. Jerome, whereas unlearned and
simple men, both spiritual and secular, but especially children brought
up in monasteries and dedicated to be religious, should use the
German translation of the Latin Bible, for the avoiding of idleness,
on saints' days, when they have time. Therefore a lover of the salva-
tion of all men, not moved by earthv praise and honour, but by
Christian love and ^-irtue, and urged thereto by certain men of good
heart: this man, with the help and counsel of many highly-learned
men, has had printed at great cost, in the city of Cologne, the German
translation of the Latin Bible; which translation was made many
years before, and used in manuscripts by many devout men, both in
men's and v.-omen's convents: and long before this time it has been

1 For descriptions and bibliographies of these editions, see Walther , 1 1 3- 1 8 .
HH, III. 65. The number of editions is large, but not particularly large com-
pared with the number of issues of various popular pious manuals ; it is, of
course, very much smaller than that of liturgical books in frequent use,
Uke missals and brevferies.

- Walther, 204.

' Boekzaal, 387-92; cf. Tepler Bibel. 31; Hain, *3i4i. The Bible was
printed by Henricus QuenteU in 1480, though it does not contain his name
or the date. See Walther, 655-71 ; and J. Geffcken, BUdercatechismiis des
fiinfzehnien J ahrhiinderts , Leipsig, 1855, 9. The text was followed by the
Lubeck Bible. 1494, which has a similar preface, but added the gloss of
Nicholas of Lyra to the text. For the original translator, see supra, p. 64.

^ ♦

122 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

printed in the Oberland, and in some towns of the Netherlands: and
it has spread into many lands, and is bought there with the greatest
eagerness at great cost.

This preface almost takes the form of an explanation or
apology for tthe printing of the book, and is interesting as
shewing that the editor thought his work would be of chief use
to simple priests and religious, and as alleging that German
manuscripts had been widely used, not by lay people, but in
convents. This agrees with other evidence as to the users of
such translations: and the regions cited are those where, long
before, the Waldensian heretics, then the Beguines, the Gottes-
freunde, and finally the Brethren of the Common Life, had been
' influential, and friendly to the use of a vernacular literature of
devotion.

i The history of the early printed German Bibles is of special
mterest for the attitude of the Church to biblical translations.
Such editions are earlier, and much more numerous, than those
of any other country. Of course this was partly due to the
flourishing condition of the Rhine towns at the time, and to the
number and vigour of the printing presses, which had multiplied
earlier in the Rhine towns than elsewhere. No doubt, also, the
early appearance of printed Bibles in German}^ was due to the
relaxation in favour of biblical translations, in some orthodox
circles, which was strengthened after 1466 by the diffusion of
the printed editions. The question is nevertheless very interest-
ing: What share did the official ecclesiastical world take in the
production of these editions, and what was its attitude towards
them?

The two extreme answers to these questions can be put aside.
On the one hand, there is no evidence that the editions were the
work of a definite sect of heretics, like the Lollards or the
Waldensians, and as such condemned by authority. The
Hussites had preserved Wycliffe's teaching in Bohemia when it
had been almost stamped out in England, and other sects
existed, who set store on the lay reading of the Bible : but there
is no definite evidence to connect the early printed editions with
these sects. On the other hand, it is quite certain that none of
these printed Bibles was an oflicial edition^, approved by

» Keller, 67-.

IV] ECCLESIASTICS AND PRINTED BIBLES 123

authority: though to issue such an edition would have been as
possible to any bishop, as to order the publication of tracts on
faith and conduct at diocesan synods, a thing which had often
been done in the past.

The chief authority on the history of the German Bible con-
siders, however, that there is evidence that the attitude of
ecclesiastical authority was not favourable to the issue of these
editions^; and such a conclusion agrees with the evidence
examined above as to the usual mediaeval attitude towards
biblical translations. First, there is no evidence of any change
in the carefully considered mediaeval idea, that lay Bible reading,
unsupervised by the clergy, was harmful. If John Busch, who
held advanced and liberal ideas on the subject, and who only
died about 1480, did not approve of unlicensed Bible reading, it
is not probable that the majority of German bishops did so in
1466. Secondly, it is noticeable that, while the cloister presses
of Germany were turning out a stream of devotional literature,
both Latin and German, they never printed any translation of
the Bible^. Thirdly, the absence of printers' names in the four
earliest editions, and in some of the later ones, is strong evidence
that the printers expected no thanks from ecclesiastics for their
work^. Just as Luther's Bible found printers who were not too
scrupulous as to the view the Church would take of their work,
so the printers of the early German Bibles considered it safest to
conceal their names, — even in an edition as late as the tenth, of
1485, at which date the absence of a printer's name is most /^^
unusual. •Tbifdly, the absence of the translator's name, though
not as significant as the absence of the printer's, probably shews
that the earliest editors were laymen. Walther considers that
the first four editions at least were due to the efforts of laymen,
and that their anonymity was due partly to suspicion that their
enterprise would not be well received*.

^ Walther, 204, 5.

^ Falk, Die Druckkunst im Dienste der Kirche, Cologne, 1879, 10.

^ Walther, 205. The publisher (not printer) of the first German Bible,
Mentel of Strassburg, was apparently orthodox, see id. 204; Putnam, 11. 12,
states that Anthonius Koberger of Nuremberg, who printed a German Bible
in 1483, was a verj' well-known publisher; and that Christ Froschauer of
Zurich, an associate of Zwingli and an ardent reformer, printed a German
Bible.

* Walther, 206.

124 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

Lastly, there is the evidence of the censor's edicts on the
subject; and, though these have been interpreted as intending
to prevent only bad translations, there is some ground for
thinking that the authorities would not have been displeased
had they prevented the printing of translations altogether. It
is certain in any case that no German Bible was approved by the
ecclesiastical censor, as, for instance, were two books from Venice
and Heidelberg in 1480, and the Cologne Latin Bible of 1479,
which still bear the censor's mark^. The most interesting edict
is that of Berthold, count of Henneburg, archbishop of Mainz,
and archchancellor to the emperor, in 14862. Printing, it states,
is useful for the increase of knowledge :

Yet we have found that certain men, inspired by the desire of money
or by vain glory, have abused this art : and have perverted what was
given for the instruction of humanity to ruin and calumny. For we
have seen even books of the divine office, and the mysteries of our
reUgion^, translated from Latin into German, and handled by the
common people, to the degradation of religion. And finally even,
how can we express ourselves about the translation even of the cano-
nical books and the precepts of the law*? For, if these books should
be translated most suitably and prudently by the most prudent and
eloquent of men, yet this branch of science is so exceedingly knotty,
that even the whole life-time of a most wise and prudent man would
scarcely suffice for it. Yet certain rash and ignorant fools dare to
translate into the vulgar tongue, and to print, such volumes : for whose
translation many learned doctors have confessed that their under-
standing is too small, because of the great inappropriateness and*"

^ Reusch, I. 56. Books passed by the censor were marked " Admissum " ;
"Temptatum"; or "Examinatum admissumque ac approbatum ab alma
Universitate studii civitatis Coloniensis, de consensu ac voluntate (censor's
name), pro tempore rectoris eiusdem"; see also i. 58, and for a 1491 ordi-
nance by a papal legate, Mansi, Supp. vi. 681.

^ Printed Codex Diplom. Anccdotorum, Gudenus, Frankfurt, 1758, iv.
469-72.

^ i.e. breviaries and missals.

^ Sacrorum canonum legumque preceptis : the remainder of the edict shews
that this expression refers to the Bible, and not to a translation, for instance,
of the Decretals, or some collection of canon laws, for which the next sen-
tence would be quite inappropriate, even if it were less incredible a priori
that anybody should translate books of canon law into the vernacular.
These were quite useless except to men who could plead in the Latin tongue
before ecclesiastical judges. The "books of both laws " is a frequent mediae-
val term for the ' ' books of both Testaments, ' ' — the old law, and the new law ;
see pp. 81 n. 3, 227, 256.

The later reference to the gospels and epistles renders it almost certain
that this expression means the Bible.

IV] censor's edict of i486 125

abuse of words. What shall we saj^ finall}^ about works of the
other branches of science, with some of which false passages are
mingled and false titles given, or when they are sometimes attributed
to famous authors, to obtain the more buyers?

Let such translators sa}', if they have any regard for truth, whether
they do this with good or evil mind, and whether the German lan-
guage is sufficient to treat of these things 1, of which so many great
writers both Greek and Latin have written with such exceeding
accuracy and skill, both of the highest mysteries of the Christian
religion, and of natural philosophy? For it must be confessed that thp
poverty of our mother tongue is quite insufficient, and that it would be
necessary for translators to invent unknown names for things out of
their head ; or, if they used old names, they would corrupt the true
meaning : which we fear the more, because of the great danger in the
case of the sacred books. For who would enable simple and unedu-
cated men, and even women, into whose hands copies of the sacred
books might fall, to pick out the true meaning^? For it is obvious,
and certainly no prudent man will deny, that the text of the holy
gospels, or the epistles of S. Paul, need much supplementing and
exposition by other writers. Yet such books are met with, and even
frequently [in the vernacular].

What shall we say then of the translation of those works which
rest under the sharpest disapproval of writers of the catholic Church ?
We might say much : but let the bare mention of them here suffice. . . .

We therefore command and enjoin that no work, of whatever
branch of science, art or knowledge, shall be translated from the
Greek or Latin or any other tongue into the common German tongue,
or, when translated (even with any change of style or title) , shall be
published or bought, publicly or privately, directly or indirectly:
unless both before printing, and between printing and publication,
they are licensed to be printed and published by John Bertram of
Naumburg^, in the case of theological books, and . . . [three other
professors in the case of books of law, medicine and arts, respecti vel)?] ,
deputed by our letters patent.

This edict seems to have been effective in suppressing the
printing of Bibles in Mainz itself for the next ten years: but not
altogether in the other big towns of the province, where evasion
was probably easier. Yet it is noticeable that after 1488 only
three editions of the German Bible appeared in the next thirty
years : a number significantly small compared with that of the

* For the same argument about Italian, see Passavanti, p. 46; about
English, friars Butler and Palmer, Appendix.

2 Thfe backbone of the mediaeval argument: the need of the fourfold
interpretation of scripture: cf. p. 288.

' Rector of the university of Mainz; cf. Reusch, i. 58.

126 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

years 1466-1486^. No biblical translation, however, bears the
mark of having been approved by Bertram of Naumburg, who
should, presumably, have censored all such works till his death
in 1 5 15. This is the only edict which refers expressly to biblical
translations: but in 1479 the rector of the university of Cologne
issued one against all printers, buyers and readers of heretical
and erroneous books, "and such things as are hurtful to the
Christian religion," and this edict was confirmed and applied to
the provinces of Cologne, Mainz, Trier and Magdeburg by pope
Alexander VI in 1501^. The later censorial edicts do not deal
specially with biblical translations, like that at Mainz: but are
quoted to shew that censors of erroneous books existed elsewhere
in Germany at the time, and that we might have expected to
lind one or two of the numerous German Bibles bearing their
mark of examination, had the ecclesiastical world been generally
favourable to such translations. In 1479 ^ Latin edition of the
scrfptures was printed at Cologne, with the approbation of the
censor of the university^: so that the omission of the censor's
mark in the Dutch Bible printed at Cologne in 1480 is the more
marked. On the whole, however, it was not tiU printed German
Bibles had spread beyond control, that the official attitude to
them changed, — and not then in all cases, as we have seen in
that of Geiler of Kaysersberg.

§ 5. Lastly, it is interesting to trace the growth of orthodox
favour towards bibUcal translations in the years 1450-1526, the
period of the spread of the printed editions. Evidence of this
can be found in the edicts of provincial councils, in manuals, and
in instances of the ownership of translations by lay people : and
(a most important point), in the case of the councils and manuals,
it cannot be paralleled in an earlier period.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, councils and synods
had passed many regulations for the preaching of sermons in the
vulgar tongue : but the end had always been the instruction of
the faithful in the elements of the faith'*, not the translation to
them of the Sunday gospel. The value of these sermons at mass

1 Walther, 718. 2 Reusch, i. 54-6. ^ Putnam, 11. 11.

* Canon lvi. of the diocesan synod of Strassburg, 1335, required all parish
priests in the sermon at the Sunday mass, to preach and explain the creed
to their people in the vulgar tongue. See Dacheux, 7.

IV] SYNODS AND TRANSLATIONS 127

was specially emphasised in Germany in the fifteenth century;
and, at the end of it, priests were advised to explain the meaning
of the Sunday gospel in German. No case is known where a
synod enjoined the preliminary reading of the text of the gospel
in German, before 1526; although one manual recommended in
1504 that the priest should do this in place of the sermon, if
hard pressed for time. At the end of the period, however, there
are two cases of synods^ recommending a close exposition of the
text of the gospel: priests were to "expound the honest meaning
of the words."

In 1403 the council of Magdeburg, in addition to the universal
canonical duty of attendance at mass on Sundays and holy days,
laid the faithful under obligation to hear the sermon of their
parish priest or his substitute^; even as they bound the priest to
preach the sermon. In 1445, 1497 and 1504 synods enjoined
that parishes with Slav inhabitants must have an assistant
priest who could speak that language, or should have the ser-
mon translated for them by an interpreter 3. The synod of
Eichstadt, 1447'', was the first to recommend a close exposition
of the Sunday gospel, and here there is no mention of an actual
translation :

We enjoin priests to be cautious in their sermons, and not to utter
useless and vain tales, utterly offensive to pious minds, but rather
to preach on Sundays and holy days the holy scripture of the Old
and New Testament, plainly and intelligibly. First, let them explain
the text in the vulgar tongue, as it lies, adding a commentary,
or verse by verse, even as they know to be suitable for their people's
capacity ^.

The fifteenth century synods do not generally mention the
sermon when requiring attendance at mass; but in 1492 that at
Schwerin forbade parish priests to be absent on Sundays, thus
depriving the faithful of mass and sermon; and at Freysingen®

^ Eichstadt and Ratisbon, see infra.
2 Con. Germ. v. 697.
^ Dacheux, 8.

* 'Con. Germ. v. 364.

^ Pnmo textum, prout jacet, vulgariter exponendo subjunctis postillis
vel per membra declarent, veluti plebis capacitati convenire cognoverint.

* Dacheux, 8. The preaching of a sermon was certainly general at the end
of the century: the sj-nod of Bale, 1503, and various writers, denounced
those who went out into the churchyard during the sermon.

128 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.

visitors were to ask if the parish priest preached every Sunday.
The synod of Ratisbon in 1512 reiterated almost verbatim the
decree of the synod of Eichstadt about sermons, but omitted the
words emphasising the closeness of the exposition, "as the text
lies,. . .verse by verse^." The synod of Meissen, 1504, ordered
the priest to "read the Pater and Creed in the vulgar tongue to
the people, and teach it them^" at the sermon, in language that
shews that the synod of Eichstadt did not intend to order "the
reading of the gospel in the vulgar tongue " in the sermon.

This is borne out by the advice given in the very popular
Manuale Curatorum, or manual of parish priests, composed by
Ulric Surgant of Altkirch, the parish priest of S. Theodore at
Bale, who died in 1503^. The manual gives a list of books suit-
able for the study of young priests, and analyses preaching under
live headings, — the homily, the prone, the sermon proper, etc. :

But sometimes, if the priest is in great haste or has to say several
masses, the parish priest may say to the people: "I shall merely read
to you the gospel for the day, without comment or introduction;
these are the words of S. Matthew, and this is the meaning, in the
vulgar tongue " : or, "Instead of a sermon for to-day, I will tell you the
gospel for the Sunday, with its meaning, in brief."

The priest is however warned to tell the people that he is only
telling them the sense of the words: for he might translate in
one way, and there are printed gospels which might translate
in another: and laymen or women might read them at home,
and say: "My book has not got the text as the preacher says,"
as if he had said something wrong*.

From 1470 onwards various German manuals, written for the
laity, recommended attendance at the Sunday sermon. In 1470
the Spiegel der Sunder went so far as to say that : " Whoever has
in his house boys of fourteen and girls of twelve, and neglects
to send them to the sermon, sins mortally, as they do in not

^ Con. Germ. vi. 112: primo textum subjunctis postillis declarent, veluti
plebis capacitati noverint convenire.

" Dacheux, 10.

3 Dacheux, 19, and E. Schroder, Gott. Gel. Am. 1888, 254, for the passages
quoted.

* "Dis ist der Sinn der Worten: non sine cautela, ideo quia evangelia sint
in vulgari impressa; et ille sic, alius sic, vulgarizat, et laici viri seu mulieres
in domo prius legentes ista deinde dicerent : liber meus non habet sic textum
ut praedicans dixit, quasi male dixisset." Geffcken, Bildercatechismus , 10.

IV] GERMAN MANUALS 129

going^." In 1484 the Hymmelstrasz and the Licht der Seek
both recommended the faithful to go, and to write down what
they heard^. In 1508 the Nntzlich...Buchlin, and in 1509 the
Wurzgdrtlein^ went further, and recommended the faithful to
read the scriptures for themselves, in a spirit of humility: "if
you should read them in a spirit of pride, they will be hurtful to
you." In 1513 the Himmelstiir* urged that

All that you hear in sermons orthrough other modes of instruction. . .
should incite you to read with piety and humility the Bible and holy
books, which are now translated into German, and printed and dis-
tributed in large numbers s, either in their entirety or in part, and
which you can purchase for very little money.

More striking still is the preface to the Bale plenary of 1514^:

Hast thou pious books? Read them on Sunday after the sermon,
after supper and in the midst of thy family. There ought to be no man
who has not a copy of the holy gospel with him in his house'.

The number of these exhortations to Bible reading is of course
small compared to the stream of such manuals and books of
homilies which came from the press ^: but, since they cannot be
paralleled in earlier manuals, which were also very numerous,
they are interesting as evidence of the turn of the tide.

Four cases of individual ownership, or copying of biblical
translations, might perhaps be noticed. In 1399 Wernerus
Dominicus Mynne, possibly a layman, completed the writing of

^ Dacheux, 14; this tract, published Augsburg, 1470, is a confession book,
compiled chiefly from three fifteenth century Latin manuals. It is not a
German edition of the much older Latin Speculum Peccatorum, which was
translated into English in the fourteenth century, and which has no refer-
ence to sermons. See Geffcken, Bildercatechismus, (ii), 47-79, for long extracts
from this work, and from many similar contemporary confession books.

^ Dacheux, 14; Bildercatechismus, (ii), 106.

' Janssen, i. 59.

* Id. I. 56.

* There were 22 editions of the psalms before 1509, 25 of the epistles and
gospels before 15 18.

* Schroeder, Gott. Gel. Am. 1888, 254.

' This is, incidentally, the preface meant to secure customers for the
edition of the epistles and gospels, not merely a pious exhortation. That
the reading of glossed plenaries was popular, however, is shewn by the issue
of 102 editions of gospels and epistles with homilies between 1470-1520.
Janssen, i. 54.

* Cf. the German manuals of the date in Hentsch: the Frauenbuecklein,
c. 1500, p. 229, gives many instances from the Bible, but no tract advises
the use of German plenaries, etc.

D.W.B. q

130 BIBLE READING IN EMPIRE AND NETHERLANDS [CH.IV

a Dutch plenary in the house of Hugo of Necelhorst^. About
1450, or a httle later, Elizabeth von Volkensdorf, a daughter of
one of the noblest and richest families of upper Austria 2,
possessed about fifty German books, of which the catalogue has
come down to us. The list included a Bible, a psalter, a gospel-
book, an epistle-book, the Apocalypse, a homily on the epistles,
and another on the gospel In Principio, and two copies of
"Our Lady's Bible," — that is, her life. In 1462 a burgher of
Leyden, Willem Heerman, left to the church of S. Peter in that
town a complete copy of a Dutch Bible, for the use of "all good
pious men, who wish to read therein something profitable^";
and in 1474 a Dutch Bible History was written for master Hugh
Gherytz, a surgeon^. These cases, which could perhaps be in-
creased in number by an exhaustive search, contrast with the
complete absence of evidence of lay ownership in England, after
1408 ^ except among the Lollards; but they do not oppose the
conclusion that the greatest users of translations were convents
of women.

It seems a fair deduction from the evidence given in this
chapter to say that at the beginning of the fifteenth century the
orthodox champions of biblical translations were few, and con-
fined to the circle of the Gottesfreunde; that the Brethren of the
Common Life were largely influential in extending the use of
translations in convents, and of German manuals among the
laity; that the printing of German Bibles was done without the
approval of the Church, and that though, about 1500, some
writers of manuals had begun to approve of their possession by
lay people, other orthodox churchmen continued to regret it.

^ Boekzaal, 292.

2 Die Bibliothek des Chorherrnstiftes St. Florian, Czemy, A., Linz, 1874,
237, 8. " Hie ist ze merkchen waz ich Elspet Volchenstorfferin pueher hab
deutscher." Cf. Kern, 400.

^ Moll, Kerkenges, 11-. 335; cf. Jostes, Waldenser und die vorluther. Bibel,
Munster, 1885, 28.

* Boekzaal, 251.

^ Absence of owner's names in the MSS., or in wills.

CHAPTER V

Biblical translations before W y cliff e : as known to
W y cliff es contemporaries, and as known to us

§ I. Between the death of Wydiffe in 1384, and the pro-
hibition of the WycHffite translations in 1408, there was con-
siderable discussion about the lawfulness of making any trans-
lation of the Vulgate. Apart from evidence that such discussion
went briskly forward^, we have five treatises written between
1380 and 1408 dealing with this subject, occasioned of course by
the Lollard effort to popularise their own bibhcal translations.
This discussion could not of course ignore the argument from
precedent, so that it affords ample evidence of what Wj^clif^e's
contemporaries believed about the existence of earlier biblical
translations, and the examples with which they were acquainted.
Three of these treatises were by Lollards, and pleaded for the
lawfulness of translations, while two were by friars, who wrote
against them^. There is also an interesting reference to biblical
translations in a non-controversial tract, the Dialogue between a
Lord and a Clerk, which John Trevisa prefixed to his English
version of Higden's Polychronicon in 1387. Trevisa, chaplain to
lord Thomas of Berkeley, was a professional "turner" or trans-
lator, and he recounted in the Dialogue how his lord had recom-
mended him to English the Polychronicon, and had overcome
his scruples as to whether the popularisation of such a work was
profitable. The "Lord" called to witness the making of earlier
translations of learned works, and included in his catena such
instances as he could give of the translation, in verse or sermon,
of any part of the Bible: he was plainly ignorant of any com-
plete English translation of the Bible, suitable for a precedent.

In the five controversial tracts also, the champions of ver-
nacular Bibles employed the argument from precedent largely,
and their opponents could not altogether ignore it. Both sides

1 Cf. Pollard, 203-8. * Printed, Appendix 11.

9—2

132 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

mentally ran through what they knew of earlier English trans-
. lations: the Lollard party, like the jurists of Cologne, eagerly
/' sought for all the instances that they could find, to prove that
( translations had been made and used by orthodox Englishmen ;
and since at least one of their treatises is the work of a scholar,
the non-reference to any translation immediately preceding the
days of Wycliffe is very strong proof that such translation was
completely unknown. Had any such orthodox translation
existed, and been at all widely used by the faithful between
1350 and 1408^, it is scarcely conceivable that the two anti-
translation treatises should have been written at all. But these
"anti" treatises did deal with the alleged precedents of Bede's
translations. The importance of the historical references in
these tracts and in Trevisa's Dialogue is this: that it enables us
to distinguish clearly between recognised translations and tracts,
and those which existed at the time but were quite unknown,
and without influence. It enables us to see what archbishop
Arundel meant, when he said in 1408 that translations made
before Wycliffe's day should remain lawful: because the trans-
lations of which he was thinking were not those which^ might be
"alleged" by a modern specialist in English literature. We can
reconstruct from these tracts a list of these works, as known to
the contemporaries of Wycliffe and Arundel, both in the periods
before and after the conquest.

§ 2. There was a fairly general concurrence of opinion that
large parts of the Bible had been translated into prose in Anglo-
Saxon times, and the two names with which the translation was
connected were those of Bede and Alfred. Probably the basis
of the idea was the writers' knowledge of some manuscript of
the Anglo-Saxon gospels in one of the abbey libraries : we should
probably have dated the manuscript as written about 1050 or
1 100 A.D., as were those now in existence, but fourteenth century
scholars believed them to be much earlier, and connected them
with the names they found mentioned as translators in written
records.

1 With the exception of the psalter : the translation of which was always
regarded as more permissible than that of other parts of the Bible, and
occurred earlier. The pro-vernacular writers quoted Hampole in their
favour: the anti- vernacular ones did not bring up the point of English
psalters at all.

V] ANGLO-SAXON TRANSLATIONS 133

John Purvey, whose Hst of historical precedents is by far the
largest, mentions that

S. Oswald 1, king of Northumberland, asked of the Scots an holy
bishop Aidan to preach to his people : and the king himself interpreted
it on English to the people. If this blessed deed be allowed to the king
of all holy Church : how not now as well ought it to be allowed a man
to read the gospel on English, and do thereafter?

Trevisa says that "Caedmon^ of Whitby was inspired by the
Holy Ghost, and made wonder poesies in English, nigh of all the
stories of holy writ."

Three writers mention Bede. "The holy man Beda^" says
Trevisa, "translated S. John's gospel out of Latin into English,"
— a statement justified by a passage in the Ecclesiastical History'^.
Purvey the Lollard mentions the same precedent :

Venerable Bede . . . translated the Bible, or a great part of the Bible,
whose originals been in many abbeys in England.. . .And Cistrence
saith, that the evangely of John was drawn into English by the
foresaid Bede, which evangely of John, and other gospels been yet
in many places of so old English, that unnethe can any man read
them 5.

Palmer the Dominican, when expressly challenged with the
precedent of Bede's translation, made two objections:

Even if Bede did translate the whole of holy scripture, nevertheless
the Church did not accept his translation, because perchance he erred
in it, even as Jerome and nearly all the others who have presumed to
translate it. And secondly, I assert that Bede did not translate it,
except inasmuch as it was necessary to salvation and easy of under-
standing; because, according to his own teaching, he could not trans-
late the whole into the barbarian tongue, as I have shewn above®.

The Franciscan Butler also made a veiled reference to the
supposed translations of Bede, quoting first from the third book
of Aristotle's Rhetoric, "quanto maior est populus, tanto minor
vel remotior est intellectus."

"Therefore, though it might have been allowable," he says, "that
the common people should be able to read holy scripture at a time
when few speaking that tongue were converted to the faith, in what-

^ See p. 441. 2 Pollard, 206. * Id. 206.

* Ven. Bedae Hist. Eccles., Plummer, C, 1896, i. Ixxv.
^ See p. 441; Cistrence = Ranulph of Chester, or Higden, author of the
Polychronicon : which was translated into English by Trevisa.
« See p. 435.

134 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

ever nation it might be : nevertheless it does not follow that it would
be allowable in the same nation nowadays for all in like manner to be
able to read the scriptures, as in the days when they were catechu-
mens. And if it can be proved that any recognised or canonized doctor
did translate the holy scriptures for any people to read, or even
advised them to read, nevertheless it does not follow that it would
be allowable nowadays : because one matter remains doubtful, even
that saying of Aristotle, that * the greater the people, the smaller its
understanding.' Therefore the best way of knowing God is by reflect-
ing about Him, and by prayerfully entreating Him, and Christians
- get more good from these two methods than by reading or hearing i.

Trevisa mentions too that king Alfred^, "that founded the
university of Oxford, translated the best laws into English
tongue, and a great deal of the psalter, out of Latin into English " ;
and Purvey, probably quoting from the same source, says that
" Alfred 3 the king ordained open schools of divers arts in Oxford,
and he turned the best laws into his mother tongue, and the
psalter also."

There is, of course no a priori reason why Anglo-Saxon
scholars should not have translated the Bible, as fourteenth
century critics believed that they did. In a missionary church
this should have been useful, not to the unlettered layman, but
to the young monks and priests sent out to instruct them. Trans-
lations were made for use in the Eastern branch of the Church in
the ninth century, and their use was confirmed by the pope in
879 ; the western feehng against translations did not harden till
the time of Gregory VII. Nevertheless there is no evidence that
a complete translation, even of the four gospels, was made till
ML-.- \ the time of Aelfric, in^the eleventh century, or that bibhcal
translations were used at all in the Anglo-Saxon period for the
regular instruction of monks, priests or laity. Generally speak-
i ing, the text of the Bible was studied only by the monks, and it

was studied in Latin.

Bede, who died in 735, wrote Latin commentaries on all the
books of the Bible, and the story of his completion of an Enghsh
translation of the gospel of S. John on his death-bed is familiar.

1 See p. 406. ^ Pollard, 206.

3 See p. 441 . Anglo-Saxon interlinear glosses on the psalms date from the
ninth century: Paues, 1902, x. ; but Anglo-Saxon psalters were written as
late as the twelfth or thirteenth centuries: cf. Fitzwilliam, 12, the Peter-
borough psalter of 1260-70. The whole number of remaining manuscripts
is, however, small.

V] BEDE AND ALFRED 135

He probably translated only about the six first chapters, as is
explicitly mentioned by Cuthbert his pupil in a letter. In either
case, the translation is not extant, and would have been of little
use to any except the monks of his day..' These of course did a
large amount of missionary and pastoral work: but the secular
clergy appear, from Bede's description of them, to have had very
little learning. In a letter to bishop Egbert, Bede exhorted him
to take especial care in instructing ordinands in

the Catholic faith, which is contained in the apostles' creed and the
Lord's prayer, which scripture in the holy gospel teaches us. For it is
certain, that all who have learnt the use of the Latin speech, will best
learn this in Latin: but make the unlearned, that is, those who know
only their own tongue, learn them in their own language, and care-
fully repeat them; and this should be done, not only in the case of
laymen, that is, those hitherto living the secular life, but also in the
case of monks and clerks, who know Latin. . . . Wherefore I have myself
had both these, that is, the creed and pater noster, translated into the
English tongue, for the sake of many priests, who are often un-
learned ^

The words throw light on the learning of secular ordinands oi
the day, and shew how little likely they were' to attempt trans-
lations of the Sunday gospel at mass, or an3'thing of the kind-.
The only translations made by the command of king Alfred
were those chapters of the Bible he incorporated in the collection
known as Alfred's Dooms, or Alfred's Laws^. He began this by
an English rendering of Exodus, chapters xx. to xxiii., — the
account of the giving of the law to Moses, and of the Mosaic
civil code. This was followed by that passage from Acts xv.
which describes the enactment of the council of Jerusalem, and
gives the relation of Christianity to the Mosaic law. The other
books which Alfred actually selected for translation were not
bibhcal, but such works as Gregory's Pastoral Rule and Bede's
Ecclesiastical History ; he and Aethelwold, bishop of Winchester,
also ordered the translation of S. Benedict's Rule, for the benefit
of seculars joining the monasteries. Alfred died in 901: but
though we possess twelve manuscripts of English glosses on the

^ Plummer's Bede, i. 408.
. 2 For the learning of the Anglo-Saxon clergy, cf. R. Graham's Intellectual
influence of English monasiicism, RHT, vii. 24 ff. ; and for a priest who knew
the old British, or Gaelic, language, Gesta Abbatum, RS, 28, i. 26; cf. also
Schools of Med. England, Leach, A. F., 1915. 5i ff- ^ Cook, 69.

136 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE L<^H.

psalter, some of them from the ninth century, there is nothing
to connect any of them with his name. The behef of Purvey and
Trevisa that he translated a large part of the psalter was due to
the assertion of William of Malmesbury, that he "attempted to
translate the psalter, but died when he had barely finished ex-
plaining the first part^." This descnption fits the first trans-
lation of the psalms which has come down to us: a translation
actually of the first part, or quinquena, of fifty psalms; this
work originated, however, early in the tenth century^.

The earlier verbal glosses on the psalter would have been
useful in teaching novices to read the divine office, but word for
word glosses could never have been actually read aloud, because
they did not form consecutive English sentences. This was the
case also with the earliest Saxon gospels which have survived,
the Lindisfarne gospels or old Northumbrian gloss, which was
written about 950 a.d., and the slightly later Rushworth gospels,
or old Mercian gloss. Such works must have been used for
private study only: they could not have been read aloud, in
either church or refectory.

The earliest surviving gospels, which can properl}^ be called a
translation, were the West Saxon gospels of an otherwise un-
known Aelfric, monk of Bath, who wrote about 900, or soon
after. There are seven manuscripts of this version, some of a
good deal later date. A more famous Aelfric, the scholarly abbot
of Eynsham, who died c. 1020, wrote both a vigorous paraphrase
of parts of the Old Testament, and a set of homilies on the
Sunday gospels, most of them prefaced by a translation^.

" I regretted," said Aelfric, " that the English knew not nor had not
the evangelical doctrines among their writings, those men only ex-
cepted who knew Latin, and except for those books which king Alfred
wisely turned from Latin into English, which are to be had.. . .Not
only have we explained the treatise of the gospels in this matter, but
also the lives or passions of saints, for the use of the unlearned*."

* GestaRegumAngloriim.u. 12^. ^ £3,111.894. ^ Cook, 11. Set. viii. 135.

* Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, Thorpe, B., London, 1844, i. 1-3.
Aelfric exhorted Wulfsine, bishop of Sherborne, that ordinands must possess
the books needful for saying mass, and performing their pastoral duties:
"Before a priest can be ordained he must be armed with the sacred books,
namely a psalter, book of epistles, book of gospels, missal, book of hymns,
manual or Encheiridion, Gerim, passionale, penitentiale, lectionary. These
the diligent priest requires, and let him be careful that they are all accurately
written." Bibliom. 47. For opposition to translations. Cook, lxx.

Vj SAXON GOSPEL BOOKS 137

The words shew that Aelfric was not aware of any translation
of the gospels at the time, though the West Saxon gospels were
already in existence.

Such Saxon gospels as have been preserved in manuscripts
date from about 1050- iioo, and the question arises as to their
original use. References to Saxon gospels occur also in the
catalogues of mediaeval libraries, or in lists of Saxon manuscripts
written in later treatises: but they are rare. Waltham abbey
had two richly bound Anglo-Saxon gospel books in its library
at the Dissolution^; the Durham book, or the Lindisfarne
gospels, another richly bound volume with relics in its cover,
is mentioned in the Durham catalogues; and Burton abbey had
a copy of the gospel book in Anglo-Saxon^. The cathedral
priory of Christchurch, Canterbury, had between 1284 and 133 1
no less than seventeen English books (out of a total of nearly
two thousand) 3, and one of these seventeen was an English
"textus" of the four gospels, a twelfth century manuscript we
still possess. Three others were a paraphrase of Genesis, some
English sermons, and an Enghsh Acts of the Apostles, — possibly
also a paraphrase, since no manuscript of the Acts in Anglo-
Saxon exists. Bath had also the four gospels in Anglo-Saxon
about 1 100*, and two English psalters occur in a list of eleven
Anglo-Saxon manuscripts which belonged in the twelfth century
to either Worcester or Westminster^. Glastonbury in 1247 had
two Anglo-Saxon books, which, from their position in the
catalogue were probably paraphrases, or glossed bibhcal books ^.

1 W. Winters, Hist, notes on MSS. of Waltham Holy Cross, RHT, vi. 265.

* CVD, p. xxxiv; Addit. 23944.

' Canterbury, xxv. 51. The 17 English MSS. form a separate section in
this catalogue. The English textus is probably the eleventh century Royal
I. A. 14.

* Parker Coll. no. CXL.

5 See C.C.C. Descrip. Cat. 11. 202, for MS. C.C.C. 367. The list of Saxon
MSS. mentions a passionale, two Dialogues, a martirologe, two psalters, two
Pastorals. S. Benedict's Rule, the Vision of Barontus of Pisoia, and another
book.

* Joh. Glaston. Chron., Hearne, T., Oxford, 1726, 11. 424. The number of
English MSS. as mentioned in these catalogues has been much over-estimated,
apparently through the idea that the books described as "vetusti" were in
English; cf. especially Miss Graham in RHT, vii. 37. All the books, however,
were classified as novus or vetustus, legibilis or illegibilis: vetustus had no
reference to language, and was clearly used of Latin books; e.g. 11. 423, aha
bibhotheca (biblia) Integra vetusta sed legibilis; 424, cantica canticorum et

138 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

S. Paul's cathedral had in 1295 two Saxon manuscripts, one an
Old Testament as far as Zechariah, the other, probably given by
bishop Hugh de Orivalle c. 1075, as far as Job^. These seven
cases are all the references to possible biblical translations to be
found in printed monastic and other catalogues^, save for one
case of a "Christes book" in English, which was probably an
English gospel; in 1073 Leofric, bishop of Exeter, gave to his
monastery "one book of Christ in English^." The two tenth
century " Christes books " at York, and the four " Christes books"
which the abbey at Bury S. Edmunds possessed about 1050^,
were probably in Latin and not English, since they are men-
tioned in lists of liturgical books, and the language is not speci-
fied. Thus the monasteries of Waltham, Durham, Burton,
Canterbury, Bath and Exeter are the only known possessors of
Saxon gospel books about iioo a.d.^

liber sapientiae, vetusta et sine glosa; quattuor evangelia vetusta et sine
glosa, inutilis; 425, epistolae Pauli vetustae et glossatae, inutiles; 424,
luvencus de evangeliis, vetustus et inutilis; 426, liber de quadriforio b.
Augustini, vetustus sed legibilis; Augustinus de perfectione honiinis, ve-
tustus; leronymus, de consonancia evangeliorum, vetustissimus; 429, Beda
de arte metrica, de rhetorica, super Lucam: omnes isti vetusti et quasi inu-
tiles; 430, Decreta nova non tamen bona, etc. Thus vetustus clearly applies
to condition, not language: 426, bonus sed aliquatenus vetus; 437, licet ve-
tusti sint legi tamen possunt (of Latin MSS.). These instances are given
because similar mistakes as to the meaning of vetustus in other catalogues
have probably caused over-estimation of the number of A.S. MSS. Only
8 out of c. 605 codices in the Glaston. cat. of 1247 are mentioned as
being in English. These were the two glossed books mentioned above,
Orosius, two Sermons, a passionale, a medicinale, and another English book :
pp. 424, 34, 6, 9, and as correctly quoted in Somerset Med. Libraries, Williams,
T. W., Som. Arch. Soc. 1897, 69. See for king Ine's munificent adornment
of the covers of a Latin gospel book at Glastonbury, Som. Med. Lib. 48.

1 Archaeol. 1. 451, 496. The second MS. had relics in its cover.

^ Except for one or two sermons and loose paraphrases; Wells, Somer-
set, had Aelfric's sermons, Som. Med. Lib. 117, Eng. Monast. Lib., J. Hunter,
27; for list of 8 A.S. books at Durham, see CVD, 5; 6 A.S. ones at Abbotsburj',
Eng. Mon. Lib. 8; for an A.S. book, probably Bede's, at Rivaulx c. 1150,
Reliq. Antiq. 11. 185; for 2 A.S. books at Bury, JSwry, 23; i at S.Augustine's,
Canterbury, Canterbury, lxxxiv.

' Monast. 11. 527; Parker Coll. 40, MS. cxc. For " Christes book" see Lay
Folks MB, 155: probably the term was simply a variant for a " gospler " or
gospel book, but it may have meant a " textus," or book of the four gospels.

* Lay Folks MB, 155; Bury, 6, in a list made between 1044 and 1065, dis-
tinguishing gospel and epistle books.

* For givers of Vulgates to monasteries between 661 and 1066, see Monast.
II. 13; Bibliom. 95, gg, 113, 115, 119, 122, 130, 131, 156; Yorks. Archaeol.
and Top. Jour. 11. 371; Som. Med. Lib. 48, 49, 89; Royal MSS. i. D. in..
I. D. IX.; Titus D. 27.

V] NOT READ IN CHURCH 139

The rarity of these Saxon gospel books, compared with the
fact that not only the great monasteries, but every church and
chapel had to be provided with a Latin gospel book^, is very
strong evidence against any general custom of reading the
gospel in English after the Latin at mass. Permission to do so
in Slavonic was granted to Methodius, for political reasons:
similar papal sanction would apparently have been needed also
in England, but it was never given to an English prelate. Had
such a custom existed, evidence for it would almost certainly
have survived, as it has in the case of the vernacular bidding
prayers, said before the sermon. The strongest evidence put
forward for the custom has been, that surviving manuscripts of
Saxon gospel books are divided by headings, which state that
"this is the gospel for a certain Sunday, or week-day." The
evidence of the rich bindings has also been called upon to shew
that the manuscripts were liturgical books. In face of the other
evidence, however, the headings can only have been made for
the private study of the monks: had they been meant for
hturgical use, the ends of the gospels would, it seems probable,
have been inserted also, whereas actually the text sometimes
continues uninterruptedly for a chapter or two, after some
heading^. The translations would have been useful in the
preparation of sermons, for the canons of Aelfric recom-
mended the mass priest, on Sundays and mass days, to tell the
people the sense of the gospel in Enghsh, and then to explain
the creed and pater noster, as often as he could^. But the
canons clearly refer only to translations in the course of the
sermon, not to a recognised custom of reading the translated
gospel as part of the mass*.

Popular knowledge of the Bible in the Anglo-Saxon period
was based, not on translations, but on sermons, and on the old
popular paraphrases attributed to Caedmon, — a poet and

1 See Aelfric's canons, in Lay Folks MB, 155, id. 211 for criticism of Lin-
gard's opinion concerning the reading of Saxon gospel books in church, and
id. XII. for bidding prayers.

2 Of. the arrangement in the Saxon gospel book printed hy B. Thorpe,
Da Halgan Gospel, 1842, pp. 73-9, 79-83, 94-6. "9-123, 125-9, where ferias
in various weeks after Pentecost have "gospels" of nearly two chapters
of S. Mark or S. Luke. Altar books would almost certainly have had the
correct endings indicated.

3 Lay Folks MB, 212. * As in Armenia, in 879, see p. 23.

140 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

peasant, to whom the verse only, and not the translation of the
biblical stories, was due. These poems were intended to be learnt
by heart and sung by the people, for whom the memorisation
of verse was much easier than prose. It is claimed that a written
version of the songs of Caedmon exists in a manuscript, which
contains the story of Genesis, Exodus and Daniel, and a poem
on Adam and Eve and the fall of man. The earliest manuscript
H of these songs belongs to the ninth century : but others were
copied as late as 1250. Though no doubt poets of much later
date contributed to these songs, and the form in some of the
manuscripts may be entirely due to them, yet it seems
historical to class them as a cycle, which, like so many early
group-poems, long existed unwritten before taking final shape.
Up till and during the twelfth century, while English was still
mainly the language of the serfs and villeins, some knowledge
of these Old Testament epics may have been handed down by
memory and influenced belief, — just as a poem written about
1400. describes a peasant's religious knowledge as received thus
traditionally:

In Lenten time the parson did him shrive:
He said: "Sir, canst thou the}-- believe?"
The ploughman said unto the priest:
"Sir, I believe in Jesu Christ,
Which suffered death and harrowed hell.
As I have heard mine ciders telF."

The Harrowing of Hell was the most general name of the
different Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English verse translations of
the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus.

§ 3. It is noticeable that almost the only translations cited be-
tween 1066 and 1400 were those brought forward by Purvey the
Lollard, and scholar. The two other Lollard treatises men-
tioned none, perhaps because their writers were unaware of
any : and the friars who wrote the anti- vernacular treatises did
not consider the precedents alleged sufficiently important to
refute: particularly as the Lollards could not produce any
translations except that of the psalter. Purvej^ nevertheless,
made a gallant effort to produce historical arguments from the

1 Reliq. Antiq. i. 43.

V] GROSSETESTE'S RECOMMENDATION 141

period in question. He quoted the words of "the great subtle
clerk Lincoln," or Grosseteste, on the duty of preaching^:

"If any priest say he cannot preach," he saith, "one remedy is,
resign he up his benefice : another remedy is, if he will not thus, record
he in the week the naked text of the Sunday's gospel, that he con the
gross story, and tell it to his people ; that is, if he understand Latin ;
and do he this every week of the year. ... If forsooth he understood no
Latin, go he to one of his neighbours that understandeth, which will
charitably expound it to him, and thus edify he his flock, that is,
his people. Thus saith Lincoln^: and on this argueth a clerk and
saith: if it is lawful to preach the naked text to the people, it is
also lawful to write it to them, and consequently, by process of time,
so all the Bible. Also a noble holy man, Richard Hermit, drew on
English the psalter, with a gloss of long process, and lessons of Dirige, ^
and many other treatises, by which many Englishmen have been
greatly edified.. . .Also sir William Thoresby^, archbishop of York,
did do draw a treatise in English by a worshipful clerk whose name
was Gaytrik, in the which was contained the articles of the faith,
seven deadly sins, the works of mercy, and the ten commandments,
and sent them in small pagines to the common people, to learn this

^ See p. 442.

* This sermon of Grosseteste's (referred to elsewhere as beginning : Scriptum
est de Levitis, seep. 442) has not been printed. There is no reason to doubt
its authenticity, however, for his ordination sermons, some of which are
printed in the Fasc. Rev. Exp., contain passages very similar in character;
of. id. II. 251, for the need of the preaching of the gospel of Christ being
the chief cause of the evil condition of the Church; 256, "the work of the
salvation of souls . . . consists of setting forth by word and deed the gospel
of Christ, consisting both of the Old and New Testaments"; 260, 265, the
first duty of a parish priest is the instruction of his flock; 340, for a letter
ordering the archdeacon of Lincoln to assemble the rectors, vicars and parish
priests in their deaneries, in order that the bishop, who cannot, as he is
bound, preach the gospel of the word of God throughout so large a diocese,
may preach to them how they shall teach the people committed to their
charge. His visitation articles (see p. 195) enjoined on parish priests to teach
the laity the essentials of the faith in English ; and when they had said the
divine office, to "apply themselves to prayer and the reading of holy scrip-
ture, so that by the understanding of scripture they may be ready, as
pertains to their office, to give a reason to all who ask them concerning their
hope and faith." For Grosseteste's own learning, and famiharity with the
scriptures, see p. 182.

3 Thoresby issued a Latin catechism based on Peckham's canons of 1281
(see p. 196) for his own province in 1357: and with it an expanded English
version, made by John Gaytrik, a Benedictine of York, and known as the Lay
Folks Catechism (EETS, OS, 26, 118). This tract was copied into the bishop's
register, and shews that a mediaeval bishop could issue a vernacular tract,
when he wished, as an official publication. Forty days' indulgence was
granted to those who should learn the tract by heart. The original Catechistn
was expanded later, in one case at least by a Lollard writer, see Wells, 356.

142 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

and to know this, of which be yet many a company in England. . . .
Also, Annachan in the book of questions saith that the sacrament
may well be made in each common language i, for so, he saith, did the
apostles ; but we contend not that, but pray antichrist that we might
have our belief in English."

The only other precedent quoted is that of the French Apoca-
lypse, mentioned by the "Lord," in the Dialogue between a Lord
and a Clerk. "Thou wotest," he says, "where the Apocalypse is
written in the walls and roofs of a chapel, both in Latin and
French 2," alluding to the chapel of Berkeley Castle. In the pre-
Wycliffite period, such vernacular scriptures as existed were
naturally in Anglo-Norman or Anglo-French, the language of
the upper classes. A complete Anglo-Norman Bible existed in
1361^ but must have been rare, for only three manuscripts re-
main to us. The oldest part of this Bible, apart from the
psalter, was the Anglo-Norman Apocalypse, which was also the
most popular; there are 84 existent manuscripts^, including

1 This same passage is alleged in a tract, probably also by Purvey the
Lollard, see pp. 270-4. FitzRalph, archbishop of Armagh, was much quoted
by Wycliffe and the Lollards, as being a vigorous opponent of the friars.
His De Quaestionibus Armenorum deals with many matters besides those
connected with the Greek schism: the ninth book discusses "that question
raised by the Armenians according to holy scripture, whether, namely,
any definite form of words is necessary for the consecration of the body
and blood of Christ, and what that form is. . . . No Christian doubts that the
sacrament may be made as well in one tongue as in another, since the
apostles did this, and since they handed on the tradition of doing this. For
Matthew wrote the gospel in Hebrew, John in Greek, Mark in Italian, as did
Paul the epistle to the Romans ... each without doubt taught that the
consecration should be made in those tongues in which they wrote : where-
fore it is clear, that consecration can take place in each language, — nay
more, for it appears that the gift of all tongues was for this reason conferred
on the apostles, in order that they should believe that the form of consecra-
tion in this sacrament, as with the other documents of salvation, should be
exercised to each nation in its own tongue." Since, FitzRalph continues,
the synoptists related different forms of the words of consecration, it is clear
that no set form of words is needed, but a certain intention, "thus the
sacraments may as well be consecrated in one tongue as in another."
{Summa Domini Armacani in Quaestionibus Armenorum, Sudoris, J., Paris,
151 1, f. 66.)

■^ Pollard, 206.

* See p. 221, and Panes, 1902, xix. Jean de Sy's continental version of
the Bible, executed in 1355 by order of king John of France, was merely a
revision of the old Anglo-Norman Bible, for which see also Berger. For a
MS. of Proverbs and Canticles, written by a clerk "in prison" in 1312, see
Casley's Catalogue, 1734, i. A. xx.

* Paues, 1902, xxi; L' Apocalypse en frangais, Delisle, L., and Meyer, P.;

V] ANGLO-FRENCH TRANSLATIONS 143

those written both in France and England. Many of them are
incorporated with the Bible Historiale^, which largely accounts
for the diffusion of the work. This Anglo-Norman Apocalypse
was a translation of Gilbert de la Porree's Latin comment on
the Apocalypse, which was arranged in groups of three to five
verses, with the gloss following each group; the Anglo-Norman
form was itself turned into Middle-English between 1340 and ^
1370^. The "Lord" in the dialogue may have referred to this
Anglo-Norman prose Apocalypse, but he is more likelj^ to have
been thinking of an Anglo-French metrical version, written in
short rhyming verses, which was also popular, and began :

La vision ke Jhesu Crist

A son serf monstrer fist, etc.'*

Mural inscriptions were more frequent in rhyme than in prose,
as in the case of the Dance of Death at Bale, and Holbein's
Dance of Death.

It is natural the "Lord" should not have quoted the Anglo-
Norman Bible as a precedent, since it was so rare that Trevisa |
had probably never seen one: but some reference to a French
psalter might have been expected, unless he was consciously
limiting himself to English, for they were somewhat commoner.
Eadwine's PsaUerium triplex, of about 11 20, had an Anglo-
Norman, as well as an Anglo-Saxon and Latin version: and the
so-called Oxford psalter, of about the same date, became the
basis of all subsequent Anglo-French versions*. The west midland
psalter of about 1350 was translated from a French original, and in
the pre-W3^cliffite period the Anglo-French psalter was, with the
Apocalypse, the best known biblical book in the ^'ernacular.

Gilbert de la Porree died in 1154, and the Anglo-Norman translation of his
gloss on the Apoc, of which we have three versions, was made in the thir-
teenth century.

1 In 47/70 fourteenth century MSS. (of England and France).

* See p. 302.

* Ed. by Meyer, P., in Rom. xxv. 174 f. C.C.C. Camb. 20 has this Apoc.
combined with the Latin text; but some combination of the Latin text
with the Anglo-Norman prose version and gloss probably occurs also in some
MSS.

* Paues, 1902, XX. For possessors of French psalters, see pp. 186, 221.
Laud. Misc. 91 is an early fourteenth century commentary on psalms'
Ixviii. to c. ; Merton 249 is a thirteenth century comment on certain psalms,
the text in Latin, the exposition in French.

144 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

The only strict precedent quoted, for English biblical trans-
lations, was that of Richard the hermit's psalter, and this is
strong evidence that about 1408 it was the only one generally
known. It was certainly the earliest biblical book to be trans-
lated into English prose after the conquest. The upper classes
were mainly French speaking till about 1350, and the south of
England, as more in contact with Normandy, more completely
so than the north. It was therefore natural that the first local
renaissance of Middle-English literature should occur in the
north rather than in the south, and this was connected with the
lyrical, mystical and didactic works of Richard Rolle^ of Ham-
pole. Rolle's English psalter is in several ways characteristic of
the attitude of mediaeval orthodox translators. The choice of
the book was significant, and shews that the aim was increase of
devotion in those who said the hours, or the divine office, and
not the general instruction of the laity in the New Testament.

Great abundance of ghostly comfort and joy in God comes in the
hearts of them that say or sing devoutl}- the psalms, in loving of
Jesu Christ. . . . Soothly this shining book is a chosen song before God,
as a lamp lightening our life, health of a sick heart, honey to a bitter
soul. ...In this work I seek no strange English, but lightest and
commonest, and such that is most hke the Latin, so that they that
know not Latin, by the English may come to many Latin words. In
the translation I follow the letter as mickle as I may; and, there I find
no proper English, I follow the wit of the word. In expounding I follow
holy doctors, for it may come in some envious man's hand, that knows
not what he should saj-, that will say that I wist not what I said,
and so do harm to him^.

RoUe made the translation for the recluse, dame Margaret
Kirkby; and the "holy doctors" which he followed were those
of Peter Lombard's catena on the psalter. He did not translate
these in their entirety, for the quotation of eight or nine doctors'

^ See Incendium, 38, and Miss H. Allen's forthcoming catalogue of Rolle's
works. Rolle's life as a wandering hermit approximated much more to that
of a Flemish Beghard, than to that of a friar, or enclosed anchorite : and the
same charge of vagrancy was objected against him. He was never a priest,
though he had spent a year or two at Oxford.

2 Bramley, Psalter, 5. For a later psalter in Enghsh verse, based on Rolle,
see Carleton Brown, 26. For references to biblical translation occurring
in the body of Rolle's gloss, see, for the need of the guidance of the Holy
Ghost by translators, Bramley, 61 ; for a curious interpretation, " Thou shalt
raise holy writ, that lay sleeping whilst men understood it nought," id. 509.

V] ROLLE S PSALTER I45

comments on every verse makes the original Latin very long:
instead, he selected a few lines of comment for direct translation
in expounding each verse, and gave the substance of the other
glosses in his own words, and in much shorter form. The English
gloss contains much of Rolle's characteristically exuberant de-
votion and fervour throughout: and, towards the end, the
number of literal translations from Peter Lombard become
very few. Rolle's influence was primarily greatest in the north
of 'England, but his translation was copied throughout the
fifteenth century by scribes of different dialects, and became the
standard English version of the psalms. Trevisa's patron, lord
Thomas of Berkley, was one of those to have the psalter copied,
in 1415.

It is significant of the attitude of the fourteenth century to
biblical translations, that Rolle selected the psalter for trans-
lation, that he meant it for use by a religious, and that he did
not translate merely the "bare text," but added a long gloss.
His choice of Lombard's gloss for translation was merely that
of the standard commentary of the age, and as is the case with
so much Middle-EngHsh literature, had been anticipated by
Anglo-French translators. The earliest existent Anglo-French
psalter dates from about 1200^, is accompanied by the gloss of
Peter Lombard, and has several variants: but, though Rolle may
have seen such a psalter, there is no evidence at present that he
made his translation from the French rather than the Latin.
He wrote and read Latin very easily, and there are no Anglo-
French constructions in his Enghsh.

The awkwardness and stiffness both of his translation of the
text of the psalter, and of the first Wycliffite version of the Bible,
were probably due to the intention of translating a gloss as well
as a text. When the Latin gloss so often expounded each word
separately, it was most necessary to give a translation as nearly
word for word as possible, or confusion would have arisen in
translating the gloss. Free translations, "following the wit of
the word," were made at the time by preachers in their sermons,
and Rolle could have made such a translation had he wished:
but the translation of the gloss would have been more difficult,

1 V, Frangaises [Versions], S. Berger states (p. 42) that the great ma-
jority of French biblical MSS. are glossed.

D.w. B. 10

146 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

and such a gloss was considered much more advisable in the
fourteenth century than the making of a "bare text^." It is
finally significant that the propriety of Rolle's biblical trans-
lations was never questioned, whether in his life-time or later.
Translations of the psalter were never considered as quite on a
level with those of other parts of the Bible^: Rolle's was made
with no propagandist aim : it was not meant primarily f o'- lay-
people, and it was not a translation of the bare text. The last
reason probably explains why it obtained so nmch more popu-
larity than a contemporary English translation of the psalms,
made in the west midlands, of which only three manuscripts
have survived to us, and which was never mentioned by con-
temporaries^. This translation was not made directly from the
Latin, but from Anglo-French: possibly it was the version be-
queathed by a London merchant in 1348, the year before Rolle's
death. Another little-copied translation was that of Jerome's
Psalterumi Ahhreviahim, which is found in only two manuscripts,
and which is, roughly, contemporary with the Wycliffite trans-
lations.

It is noticeable that Purvey, in his search for historical
precedents for translating the Bible, made no use of those of
verse translations : this was no doubt partly because such trans-
lations were not widely known, but also probably because the
precedent had not the same value. No verse translations, or
Bible stories, or "moralisations," or homilies on the gospels,
could be appealed to by teachers in support of their doctrine, as
in the case of a prose translation : and therefore no verse trans-
lation was ever condemned as heretical. Precedents for the
translation of the bare text were what Purvey sought, and he

^ For the exemption of this psalter in 1408 see chapter xiii. ; and for the
Lollards' treatment of it, p. 304. ^ Though see p. 71 for a prohibition.

* Ed. Biilbring, K. D.. Earliest English Prose Psalter, EETS, OS, 97. The
attribution to William of Shoreham has been already discredited, cf. Wells,
403: perhaps the possible early date of Shoreham's Ordination strengthens
this conclusion. A William de Shoreham was ordained acolyte by arch-
bishop Peckham at Croydon in 1287: CYS, Reg. Joh. Peckham, 256. Merton,
249, ff. 1 17-142, a thirteenth century MS., has a French translation and
comment on certain psalms, in which the first verse of the psalm is given in
Latin, and an exposition follows in which every three or four Latin words
are quoted, then paraphrased in O.F. There is no literal and connected
O.F. version in this MS., though the translation could be extracted from the
exposition.

V] ENGLISH VERSE PSALTERS 147

included the reference to bishop Thoresby's Httle books of in-
struction because they contained translations of certain parts
of the bare text of the Bible, namely, the ten commandments
and the pater noster. Nevertheless, verse translations and loose
renderings of parts of the Bible were made between 1066 and the
days of Wycliffe, and had some influence on the laity.

The first verse translation of the psalter was made c. 1300-50
and, like Rolle's psalter, in the north of England. It is the only
complete translation which has survived, but there are various
contemporary translations, or paraphrases of single psalms^, and
especially the seven penitential psalms. A common version was
an east midland paraphrase of the seven penitential psalms,
possibly the work of Richard Maidstone, a Carmelite friar, and
written about 1370; but, as this poem has an eight line verse to
each verse of the psalms, it is a very long and very loose para-
phrase of the original. These later verse psalms were not, like
the northern verse gospels, close translations written in verse
for the instruction of the "lewid," but rather religious jeux
d' esprit, hardly intended as translations at all. Both during and
after the Wycliffite controversy similar verse translations of the
psalms were made: the prohibition of 1408 of the translation
"alicuius textus Bibliae" seems never to have been interpreted
as applying to verse translations of the psalms, and the render-
ings of Clement Maidstone, Lydga.te and Brampton never
aroused comment.

Many long poems and compilations included stories from the
Bible, and were, in a sense, the successors of Caedmon's para-
phrases. The Cursor Mundi was a long biblical poem, written
about 1300, which included many stories from the Old Testa-
ment, though it had a connected plot apart from the biblical
narrative. Poems founded on single Old Testament stories were
composed between 1350 and 1400, and dealt with such subjects
as Adam and Eve, Joseph, etc. The moral poems of Ptirit^i and
Pjitience were mainly composed of Bible stories, and date from
about 1370, while that on Susanna was written about 1370-80.

An interesting set of translations is that of the Middle-English
verse plenaries, or renderings of the Sunday gospels, with
homilies. These usuall}' folloxved the order of the Church's year,

^ See Wells, 402-5.

10 — 2

148 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

but there was a tendency to combine them so as to form con-
secutive Hves of Christ, or gospel harmonies. The earhest of
these was such a gospel harmony, written about 1200 by the
Augustinian canon Orm, who called his work the Ojjnulum^ in
reference to his own name. He dedicated it to his brother
Walther, — his brother after the flesh, by baptism, and in holy
religion, and stated in the dedication that he had collected into
his book nearly all the gospels, as they befel in the mass-book
throughout the year. Orm did not, however, translate the gos-
pels in their liturgical order, though his poem was divided up
into portions of about the length of a liturgical gospeP. He com-
posed his own gospel harmony, translating first a chapter of one
gospel and then a chapter of another : and to bring his harmony
into relation with the mass-book, he inserted a table of the
opening words of the liturgical gospels before the text. But,
though he wrote the poem to make the gospel known to the
English, there is no evidence that the single manuscript of his
poem was ever copied, or was known to his contemporaries.

The Ormulum stands by itself, and had no influence on later
verse renderings of the Sunday and Saint's Daj' gospels: but the
other verse renderings and homilies were all developments of
the same original cycle, — now generally known as the Northern
Homily Collection^. It is not impossible that they should have
been actually delivered as sermons in the pulpit on Sundays,
for we have references to the preaching of sermons in verse in
the fourteenth century, especially by the friars*, and one manu-

1 Ed. Holt, R., Oxford, 1878.

2 Id. Lxxxii.-Lxxxvii. and table of Latin "texts" at end of dedication.

3 See Gerould, G. H., North English Homily Collection, 1902 ; and in MLN,
22, 95; Cat. of Rom. iii 320; Wells, 287-92, 805.

* Wycliffe frequently accused the friars of preaching from apocryphal poems
and verse gospels: and sometimes his language implies that they actually
recited them, for the sake of novelty, in the pulpit. The friars "some by
rhyming and others by preaching poems and fables adulterate in manifold
wise the word of God"; they seek new and attractive forms of preaching,
and while the poor priests preach plainly and simply, "the friars preach
feigned words and poems in rhyme" (Op. Min. 331). They "dwell upon
apocryphal poems" {Polem. Works, i. 41), and in preaching "make use of
rhymes... for they say that unless they add some novelties beyond the
accustomed manner of preaching, there will appear no difference between
subtle theologians. . .and little lettered country priests" [Sermones, i. xvii.;
IV. 266) The abbot of S. Albans in 1426 preached a Latin sermon to the
monastic vicars, the last half being in verse. [Amundesham, RS, 229-31.)

V] ROBERT OF GREATHAM 149

script of the gospel homilies, which inserts a Latin passage, has
a note that this is to be omitted when the book is read to lay
people. It is more likely however that these verse translations
and homilies were meant for private study, or to afford material
for Sunday sermons by the parish priest.

The earliest form of this set of verse gospels was made some-
where in the neighbourhood of Durham, early in the fourteenth
century. It was made with the desire of instructing the "lewid"
folk in the meaning of the gospels, just as the Ormulum had been.
The compiler speaks of his aim in the prologue, without giving
his own name; probably he was some Austin canon or parish
priest, rather than a monk or friar: the tone of his prologue,
with its interest in lay people, is very similar to those of his con-
temporaries, Maerlant and Jan de Weert in the Netherlands.
Just as Robert of Bourne, a Gilbertine canon, translated the
Manuel des Pechiez for lay people in 1303, so the author of the
rhj^med gospels took a French book for his model, — the rhymed
French gospels of another north-countryman, Robert of Great-
ham. The latter had made them, between 1250 and 1300, for a
certain noble lady. Aline or Eleanor^, to whom he was chaplain:
she was very fond, he said, of listening to chansons de geste and
history, and as these were mostly untrue or only half true, he
made for her a set of gospels, set forth most fairly in Romance,
or French, and added a homily or exposition to each gospel.
The translations are in jingling verse, easy to learn and
remember: and as a tour de force for the first vSunday of
the year, Robert gave all the lines of this gospel the same
ending.

There are some interesting lines in Robert's prologue, which
shew that he expected opposition to his work of translation from

^ This is explained in a prologue, about 300 lines long, most of which is
printed by P. Meyer in Rom. xv. 298-305. Robert calls his treatise the
Mirror, says holy scripture is like an apple tree, whose apples only fall
to the ground with shaking, and explains its literal and metaphorical senses.
From the connexion of the manor of Greatham with the de Montforts till
1264, it is conjecturable that the Eleanor, to whom the gospels were dedi-
cated, belonged to that family, which had more than one member of the
name. The prologue, with its side references to frequent opportunities
of hearing histories and romances sung by minstrels, suggests that she was
a great lady. For a promised discussion of the authorship of the Mirror, see
H. E. Allen in Modern Philology, xiii. April, 1916, 741 n.

150 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

certain quarters, just as Maerlant expected and received it for
"unbinding the Bible into Dutchi," in the same half-century.

" I will not tell my name as yet," he says, " for the envious to tell
abroad : and so that they may not take from us that good thing, of
which they themselves wish to hear nothing. For it is the custom
of the envious to be grudging, and to cause annoyance. They all
despise the works of others, and seek to prevent holy writings^."

"The good thing of which they themselves wish to hear
nothing" is the gospel and its exposition: Robert speaks in the
same prologue of those who hear or recite the gospel, without
understanding the meaning of the Latin^ : and his words shew
that even in England between 1250 and 1300, while there were
as yet no Bible-reading heretics to cause special alarm, orthodox
feeling, or sections of it, regarded the uncovering of the biblical
text to lay people, even in verse, as probably harmful^. At the
end of his book of homilies, however, Robert disclosed his name,
to ask the prayers of his readers :

Here end the Sunday [gospels], shortly related and expounded.
Now let all those who hear and say them pray for Robert of Greatham,
that God may protect his life, and keep him in His watch and ward.

When the unknown north-countryman turned Robert's verse
gospels from French into English, — or composed English verses
largely founded upon them, — he did not translate Robert's pro-
logue, but composed his own. He said nothing in it about
expecting any opposition, or concealing his name, though he
actually made no mention of it, and we are still ignorant of it.
He had in mind readers or hearers of a lower social class than
Robert of Greatham, — the unlettered who came to the parish
church on Sundays to say their prayers, and receive such in-
struction as they might^. For them, he says, he will "undo"
the gospels in English, for they have as great need to know what
the gospel at mass means as learned men, for both were bought
with Christ's blood. When he describes some incident in our
Lord's life, the translation, though in rhymed verse, is fairly

1 See p. 73.

* Rom. XV. 300, 11. 129 f. ; cf. for similar opposition to Aelfric, supra, p. 136.
3 Rom. XV. 302, 11. 271-4.

* A later prose translator of Robert's prologue into English translated
the lines about the expected opposition, and emphasised them, see chap. xii.

* Metrical Homilies, Small, 4-5.

V] NORTHERN VERSE GOSPELS 151

close; when the subject was difficult, like the first chapter of
S. John's gospel, the verse was expanded into a loose paraphrase.
The collection was much copied and enlarged during the
fourteenth century, but the tendency of the later manuscripts
was to omit the translations of the gospels themselves, and give'
the homilies only, or to add to these livety "exempla" or moral
tales. At the same time when the northern verse gospels were
being composed, an Austin canon, Richard Cricklade, who died
in 13 10, was engaged in writing homilies on the gospels in English
tp the people^; and a fourteenth century manuscript exists
which has the texts of the Sunday gospels in French, and the
homilies upon them in English 2.

The later forms of the Northern Homily Collection added a
verse Legendary, or lives of the saints. In another verse collec-
tion, made in the south of England, the process was exactly
the reverse : the legends of the saints were the earliest material
reduced to rhyme, while homilies on the Sunday gospels were
added later. The earliest form of the collection was made,
probably by the monks of Gloucester, between 1275 and 1300,
though they perhaps used some still earlier English pieces in
making the collection^. Their chief Latin sources were the
legends of the saints: but they also used sources which dealt
with the lives of our Lord and His Mother, and therefore covered
the same ground as many of the gospels for Sunday and the
festivals of Christ. For this reason, and not because the verse
founded on them corresponded to any liturgical Latin source,
they were loosely called a temporale^. Apocryphal sources as
well as biblical ones were used, particularly the different lives
of Mary, Gospel of the Infancy and the Gospel of Nicodemus. The
tendency was to form, not a complete set of the gospels for

^ Stevens' Monast. 11. 73,

2 Harl. 6561. For a thirteenth century French verse commentary on the
Sunday gospels, see Bnt. Mus. Cat. Addit. MSS., MS. 26,773; for French
verse gospels, Dom. xi. 87.

^ Though not the Legenda Aurea, which was being translated indepen-
dently into English at this time; Wells, 292.

* The northern verse gospels for Sundays and festivals were more correctly
called a temporale, for they corresponded to the proprium de tempore or
temporale of the missal. The contemporary scribe who called this compila-
tion a "temporale" was misleading: he seems to include under it anything
which was not the legend of a saint. For MSS. of the Northern Horn. Coll.
and the Southern Legendary, see Wells, and Carleton Brown.

152 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

Sundays and great festivals, but the complete story of the life
of our Lady and the life of Christ, told consecutively, in verse,
and the tendency of the final and complete form, found only in
a single manuscript, goes farther still. This has a complete Bible
history, in verse, covering the same ground, though more ex-
peditiously, as Peter Comestor had done earlier in Latin, and
the Cursor Mundi in much earlier English. It gives a summary
of Old Testament history from the Creation to Daniel: then the
life of our Lady, the life of Jesus, the Passion, the stor}- of
Longinus, the harrowing of hell, and the destruction of Jerusa-
lem. The translation in some places keeps fairly close to the
bibUcal text, sometimes gives the story in the poet's own words,
without borrowing from any other source, and sometimes inserts
apocryphal matter. The last form of the work was written
shortly before 1400, and illustrates the tendency of orthodox
writers of the period to try to instruct the ignorant in the gist
of the gospel narrative, without translating its letter, — a ten-
dency which was of course strengthened by the edict of 1408.
The number of existent manuscripts shew that all over Europe
some form of gospel harmon}^ or life of Christ, was considered
the most suitable form for the study of the gospels by devout
lay people : sometimes the life was built up by a rearrangement
of the Sunday gospels, and sometimes the Latin Bible histories
or gospel harmonies were translated into prose or verse^.

Probably the life of Christ which was most popular for trans-
lation throughout Europe was that which was, often, in the
middle ages, attributed to S. Bonaventura^ (1221-74). It was
more popular, because originally written for the instruction of
a w'oman, and not, like Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica, or
Clement of Llanthony's Monotessaron, for historical study by
clerks.

There is quite as much homily or meditation in this book as

actual narrative. No complete prose translation^ of it was made

^ For a verse translation of Comestor, in Anglo-French of c. 1300, see La
Estorie del Evangelic, Carleton Brown, 453.

2 See Sancti Bonaventurae Opera Omnia, Quaracchi, 1882, i. xvi. no. 31:
Meditationes Vitae Chrisii, and x. 25, id. This spurious work is not printed
by the Quaracchi editors, but is found in the Vatican edition of 1609, Mainz,
VI. 534-401. *Bonelli attributed it to the Franciscan, Johannes de Caulibus,
see Opera, x. 25, and Brit. Mus. Cat. Addit. MSS., Addit. 36,983.

3 Bodley, 789, has a prose translation of the Passion.

V] BONAVENTURA'S life of CHRIST 153

before the days of Wycliffe: but verse translations of the parts
of it deahng with the Passion were frequent. The commonest
was a very free east midland translation in couplets^, which
related the story, from the last supper down to the resurrection
and harrowing of hell. This verse translation probably preceded,
and perhaps inspired, a prose translation of approximately the
same section of the Meditationes-, which abridged Bonaventura's
work, and told the story less directly and vividl}' than the verse
translation. It was used however by Rolle, and quoted in his
Meditation on the Passion of the Lord, which is a more fervent
and glowing work, and, of course, much farther from the original.
A later but much closer tranMation^ was made about 1400,
apparently in the south of England, begiiming, like the early
verse translation, at the account of the last supper. These
partial translations shew the early popularity of this work, which
Nicholas Love translated later, and which was formally approved
by the archbishop for the reading of the devout. Another Life
of Jesus has survived in a single manuscript, and was probably
translated from the French about the time of Wycliffe's teaching,
or shortly before 1400^.

Another life of Christ was occasionally read by the upper
classes in England in the fourteenth century: the original French
form of the beautiful Romantic poem of Guillaume de Deguille-
ville^, the Pelerinage Jhesucrist. This Cistercian monk of
Chaaliz®, who died in 1360, wrote three poems, which in one
sense are the ecclesiastical counterpart of the Romaunt of the
Rose, and in another the predecessors of Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress. The Pelerinage de la Vie Humaine, written in 1330-31,
told how the soul, assisted by the grace of God, is strengthened
by the sacraments, encounters the vices and virtues, and finally

1 Ed. Cowper, J. M., EETS, OS, 60, 1875. The editor attributes it without
sufficient grounds to Robert of Bourne; see Wells, 358. The dialectal and
MS. evidence date it as about 1300-25.

2 Privity of the Passion, Horstmann, i. 198; for RoUe's work, see Wells,

451-

' In Laud Misc. 23, ff. 76-102 b it is an exact translation of Bonav.
Meditationes, Rome, 1588, vi. 399, cap. l.xxiv. It is found also in Caius, 669,

ff- 75--

* See Wells, 405.

* Cf. Lounsbury, 11. 208; Cat. of Rom. 11. 558-67, for Addit. 22,937.

* Chaalis or Chailly in Valois, near Senlis.

154 BIBLICAL TRANSLATIONS BEFORE WYCLIFFE [CH.

the pilgrim passes to a Cistercian monastery. The second pil-
grimage was that of the soul after it left the body, the Pelerinage
de I'Ame, the third the Pelerinage JhesticHst^, written in 1358.
These Pelerinages were known to Chaucer, and turned into
French prose by a chaplain who dedicated them to the duke of
Bedford, regent of France; and the first was also turned into
English verse by Lydgate. The English form of the Pelerinage
de la Vie Humaine, known as The Pilgrim'^, and that of the
Pelerinage de I'Ame, known as Grace Dieu^ were among the
books most frequently possessed by the English laity in the
fifteenth century. Lydgate did not translate the Pelerinage
Jhesucrist, perhaps because of the existent translation of the
Meditationes Jesu Christi : and so far as is known, no such trans-
lation was made of it for English use. Thus this poem was
known only to the French speaking upper classes before
Wycliffe's day; but the same kind of treatment of the life of
our Lord, — its interpretation in the language of fourteenth
century chivalry, — prevailed in the miracle plays, which all
classes crowded to see. It is therefore not without interest, as
shewing a presentation of the gospel narrative widely influential
on the fourteenth century laity.

The same instinct for romance made verse translations of the
apocryphal gospels and biblical books popular among lay people.
The Gospel of Nicodemus^ had been translated into Anglo-Saxon
verse by Aelfric, and was again turned into English verse about
1300-255 ; it was translated into prose seven times, — once by
John Trevisa. The Gospel of the Infancy gave rise to a poem called

^ The three pilgrimages are edited Stiirzinger, J. J., Roxburghe Club,
1897.

2 Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, Englished by John Lydgate, 1426, Fumi-
vall, F. J., Roxburghe Club, 1905. Furnivall states, Ixv, that this Peleri-
nage was independently translated into English prose by William Hendred,
friar of Leominster, and thence by an anonymous writer into verse. It is
entitled simply The Pilgrim in Ff. 5. 30: the title in the fifteenth century
MS., Laud Misc. 740, connects it with the Romaunt of the Rose.

^ Translated into English prose in 1413, by R. W., Cat. of Rom. 11. 580.
Verse translation, Caius, 124; part prose, part verse, Kk. i. 7, "liber qui
nuncupatur Grace Dieu " ; "translated out of French into English with some
additions of the translator, 1400," Bernard, Cat. no. 2552.

* See p. 180 for the Latin form, and contents.

^ Wells, 326; MLR, X. 222. For the use of apocryphal gospels see Boek-
zaal, 348-53-

V] APOCRYPHAL POEMS 155

the Gesta Salvatoris, or Infantia Salvatoris, between 1300 and
1350, and the verse life of the Blessed Virgin and our Saviour^ is
of about the same date. English miracle plays drew from these
poems, especially the Gospel of Nicodemus, to which was due the
popularity of "hell-mouth " as a stage accessory and in windows
and frescoes.

1 Ed. Vogtlin, A., Stuttgart, 1888.

CHAPTER VI

Pre-Wycliffite biblical study by clerks: (a) the higher

clergy, friars, monks

§ I. Some light is thrown on the origin of the Wydiffite Bible
by the evidence of the attitude of earUer and contemporary
Englishmen towards biblical study. Two separate questions are
involved: whether the teaching of the Church emphasised the
duty of priests and lay people to acquaint themselves with the
text of the Bible : and whether they were sufficiently educated
to do this, either through the Vulgate, vernacular translations,
or some other means. How far, in short, were the Lollards
justified in claiming that Bible reading was a novelty, both to
priests and lay people? The whole point of their championship
of English Bibles was to make the "meek and poor and charit-
able hving of Christ " known to the multitude, and thus to pro-
voke a return to the simphcity of life of the apostolic Church :
what grounds had they then for asserting that this simphcity
of life was generally unknown or unrecognised? The temporary
success of their teaching says something for its novelty: the sect
of Wycliffites, a contemporary said, "is held in such great
honour in these days, and has so multipHed, that you can hardly
see two men passing in the road, but one of them shall be a
disciple of Wychffei." if the novelty attracted such attention,
it affords some justification for the Lollards' claim that they
made the scriptures accessible to those who before were ignorant
of them : and raises the question of the place of the Bible in the
lives of clerks and lay people before Wycliffe's day.

The Bible had always been the foundation of theological
teaching, as much in mediaeval as patristic times. There was
no change in the attitude towards it as to a final authority : the
question is rather, whether familiarity with it played any
necessary part in the lives of the body of the clergy, and of lay
people. They were famihar with a theology founded upon it;

1 Cf. De Dominio Divino, Poole, R. L., 1890, xi.

CH. VlJ GENERALISATIONS DIFFICULT 157

they were familiar with office books which embodied parts of it :
but did they make use of the sacred text itself, in their education,
or later?

The question of the extent to which biblical study was carried
on in England by clerks alone^ is itself a large one. Three cen-
turies passed between the Norman Conquest and Wycliffe's days,
and during them the training and education of the clergy made
considerable progress : generalisations true of one century would
not be true of another. But till the end of the period bishops had
to struggle to get their parish priests well enough educated to be
able to read freely the text of the Latin Vulgate : and to refuse
ordination to those who could neither read nor write at all. The
possibility of Bible reading by clerks was conditioned by educa-
tion at a grammar or local theology school, and not, in the case
of most parish priests, by a theological course at a university.
There is much more evidence as to the educational level reached
by parish priests in the later centuries than in the earlier: but
it should not be assumed that because there are more complaints
about the defective education of the clergy in these later cen-
turies, it was therefore worse than in the earlier. The contrary
is far more probable. The level of clerical education in Europe
steadily improved between the eleventh century and the four-
teenth, and it was due to the improved education of some priests
that more complaints were made about the ignorance of the rest.
It was due to earlier educational efforts that a higher standard
was now felt to be possible : and it would be a mistake to suppose,
for instance, that because archbishop Peckham complained of
the ignorance of priests in his day, fewer priests could read Latin
in 1300 than in iioo. On the contrary, fewer complaints were
made about priestly illiteracy in iioo, because it was not then
recognised as in any way possible that most parish priests should
be able to read Latin easily. The efforts of the popes and local
bishops to improve the education of ordinands were regular, if
not very effective, throughout the two centuries; and the preva-
lence of complaints in the later ones was not a sign of decadence,
but of a higher standard. Until the episcopal registers have

^ It is not proposed to include secular clerks in minor orders in the investi-
gations of these chapters, but only those clerks who were ordained to the
priesthood, and monks and friars.

158 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

been systematically studied on the subject, no final statements
can be made as to the education of English priests during the
period, so that attempts at generalisation are difficult and mis-
leading. But, nevertheless, there is already a good deal of
evidence available as to the education of priests and their
acquaintance with the Bible : evidence of their education at the
universities, theological and grammar schools: of the examina-
tion of ordinands : the books at their disposal for biblical study :
the sermons the}^ gave: the manuals they used: and the books
they normally owned. It is convenient to deal first with priests
whose education had reached the graduate stage, — those who
had sufficient fluency in Latin to use the books contained in the
great libraries, — and in the next chapter with those who were
not graduates, and were not fluent Latin scholars.

§ 2. The mediaeval parish priest was not normally the
graduate of a university. This explains the astonishing differ-
ence of intellectual level between the books we know to have
been common in libraries for biblical study, and the educational
standard required for institution to a living: the gulf between
the apparently conflicting statements, that the Sentences of
Peter Lombard was the normal text-book of theology, and that
the minimum knowledge of Latin required for institution to a
benefice was : ability to say certain short formulae by heart, and
to read the Latin services. The proportion of ordinands who were
graduates can be roughly estimated from the bishops' registers
already printed, and checked by the record of the number of B.A.
degrees conferred b}^ the universities. It is of importance in
making even a rough guess at the number of clergy who could
have read the Vulgate freely.

Were all the bishops' registers in existence, and were they
printed, the total number of graduate ordinands to the priest-
hood could be told exactly, for the registers stated the candi-
dates' academic standing carefully. But the registers themselves
have gaps, are not yet completely printed, and have not as yet
been methodically searched^: so that final statements as to the
numbers of secular priests and their learning, at a given date,
are not possible. This is particularly the case, because calcula-

^ The present writer hopes to do this in a future study, for the purpose
of giving the history of education in the middle ages a firmer statistical basis.

VI] PARISH PRIESTS USUALLY NOT GRADUATES 159

tion of the number of ordinands from registers already printed
shews that this number fluctuated greatly in different dioceses,
in the same diocese from year to year, and, to some extent, in
all the dioceses for different centuries^ : so that accurate generali-
sations cannot be formed from the combination of the records
of a few years in different dioceses and different centuries. There
were twenty-one dioceses in England, and they differed greatly
in size: but, taking Exeter as one of average size, and bishop
Brantingham as ordaining apparently a medium number of
secular priests in a fairly central period of the middle ages,
1370-94, this would give the number of secular priests ordained
each year as 21 x 35, or 735. Again, about 1300, there were
in England 8542 parishes, churches or endowed chapels^,
served by priests (either the holder of the benefice or his
vicar). If the average post-ordination life of a mediaeval
priest is taken as 25 years, this would give an average of
approximately 302 secular priests ordained per annum. The
number must actually have been larger, for there was in
England a fairly large, though unascertained, number of
priests, other than those who served the parish altars. This is
suggested even by an entry in archbishop Thoresby's register of
1361-2^, a decade after the Black Death. 302 may thus fairly
be taken as an inferior limit, while the real number of annual
ordinations to the secular priesthood was probably between
that and 735'*. This contrasts with the small number of B.A.
degrees granted by Oxford and Cambridge together in any year

^ e.g. Giffard, Worcester [Reg. ed. Bund, W.) 1282-90, ordained on average
60 secular priests per annum.

Sede Vacante Reg., Worcs. (ed. Bund, W.) 1 301-1434, averaged 40 s. ps.
in 1 301.

Sede Vacante Reg., Worcs. (ed. Bund, W.) 1301-1434, averaged 20 s. ps.
in 1434.

Brantingham, Exeter {Reg. ed. Hingeston-Randolph) 1370-94, averaged
35 s. ps. p. a.

2 Cutts, 385.

' Cf. A. Hamilton Thompson in ^rc/mco/. Jour, andser. xxi. No. 2, p. 115.

* More exact figures could be supplied by calculations from episcopal
registers: but unfortunately at no given date, (e.g. 1250, 1300, 1350 or
1400), is anything like half the area of England accounted for in published
registers. The poll-tax returns of 1377 do not distinguish between clerks
in priests' or minor orders; the returns of 1 380-1 underestimated the popu-
lation, as is shown in E. Powell's Rising in East Anglia in 138 1, 1896,
PP- 7. 123.

l6o PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

before the Reformation : it is probably safe to say that between
1300-1400 the average did not exceed loo^, and that it was
lower earlier. Hence all the secular priests who were ordained
were certainly not graduates of a university: and this is con-
firmed by the entries in the registers. Of the 812 secular priests
ordained by or for the bishop of Exeter between 1370-94, nine-
teen were M.A.'s; bishop Trillek of Hereford ordained only four
M.A.'s among 1741 priests^. Hugo de Welles, again, was bishop
of Lincoln from 1209 to 1235, and his diocese included the
university' of Oxford; presentations to livings in the arch-
deaconry of Oxford might be expected to include a high average
of graduates, but of the 156 presentations in sixteen years, only
thirteen were made to graduates^. The register of Grosseteste*,
his successor, one of the greatest advocates of an educated parish
clergy, gives only about the same proportion of graduates, as do
other registers.

The normal parish priest was thus clearly not the graduate of a
university. Although the large majority of graduates proceeded
to the priesthood, only a small proportion of these settled down
to pastoral work as their chief occupation. From the stream of
graduates were recruited the university' professors, the great
canonists and civil lawyers, the doctors, and the large number of
clerics who became what we should now call civil servants.

^ The actual numbers of the different degrees granted have only been
worked out in the Fasti Oxonienses (ed. Bliss, P., 1815), and the Cambridge
Catalogus. . .et nutnerus omnium Graduatorum (1572), after 1500. In 1500, as
earlier, the B.A. degree was still the necessary preliminary to all other degrees,
except the doctorate of music, which was still in the fifteenth century
ranked with the humbler mastership of grammar. Only the regulars re-
ceived theological or legal degrees without taking the B.A. and M.A.
{Univs. II. pt ii. 452), and these did not become parish priests: so that the
number of B.A.'s granted indicates the largest possible number of graduate
secular priests which could have existed. The Fasti Oxon. number of B.A.
degrees granted gives an average of 43 p. a. between 1503— 1526, var5ring
between 20 in 1503 and 70 in 1522. The Cat. Grad. has an average of 35
B.A.'s p. a. between 1500 and 1526, varying between 7 in 1500 and 46 in
1524. The Eve of the Reformation, Gasquet, F. A., 1905, pp. 38-9, quotes
numbers for "the average number of degrees taken by all students" for
1449-59, and 1506-35, which clash with those of the Fasti Oxon. and the
Cat. Grad. ; but some, if not all, of this difference would be due to counting
the same student three or four times over in successive years, when he took
his B.A., M.A., B.D., D.D., or passed from the arts course to civil or canon
law, or medicine. ^ Ed. Parry, J. Y., CYS

3 Rot. Hug. de Wellis. Phimmore, W. P. W.. CYS, p. xiii.

4 Ed. Davis. F. N.. CYS.

VI] GRADUATE AND NON-GRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP l6l

Some became the domestic chaplains of the greater nobles and
bishops, and as members of their households transacted the
greater part of the administrative business of the country, while
a certain number of them had proceeded to their degrees from
the friaries of Oxford and Cambridge, and a few became monks.
Many of the graduates who retained fellowships or lectureships at
the universities, or who formed part of the royal or some other
great household, were assigned livings or cathedral prebends as
part of their stipends : but they were not primarily parish priests,
never resided continuously in their parishes, and usually put in
a vicar to do the parochial work^. The resident parish priest had
received his education, — if he were not merely an uneducated
layman thrust into a living by some lay patron, — in some
grammar school, cathedral grammar or theology school, or friary
theology school^: or possibly he had resided at a university for
a year or two without taking his degree^. The university grad-
uate could read Latin easily: the examination in Latin at in-
stitution to a benefice required something very far short of this,
and mediaeval bishops found a difficulty in securing that all
parish priests should be able to recite certain Latin formulae by
heart, and read and intone the Latin services. Difficulties about
illiteracy are constantly found in the registers, and papal indults
to ordain illiterate candidates were sometimes granted on a
large scale ^. It seems broadly true to say then, from the evi-
dence of the registers and contemporary writers, that between
the Conquest and Wycliffe's day the average parish priest was
not a graduate, and probably could not read Latin freely ; some-
times, even, he could not translate it at all. The gap between the
scholarship of the graduate and non-graduate clergy was great,
and it corresponded broadly to that between those who could
read Latin freely and those who could not. The two classes in
actual life included on the one hand the bishops, university and

^ Episcopal registers give abundant evidence of this, and such a book as
the Testamenta Eboracensia gives many details of bequests of vestments,
altar plate, etc. by some member of the bishop's staff to the church of his
prebend, and to the vicar he had appointed to reside there.

" See p. 189.

^ The numbers resident at the universities compared with the degrees
granted, shew that many must have stayed a year or two and gone down
without taking a degree : the earliest part of the arts course was concerned
with Latin, or grammar; see p. 162. * See CPP, i. 394.

D.W.B. II

l62 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

cathedral clergy, friars, and some monks : and, on the other, the
parish priests. The education of these two classes, and the
extent to which they were familiar with the text of the Vulgate,
or would have been benefited by translations of it, differed
greatly, and will be considered separately.

§ 3. The education of graduates was not in itself connected
with the study of divinity or the Bible; from the very
beginning, the training given by Oxford and other univer-
sities to the majority of students consisted of the arts course,
and had nothing whatever to do with the study of the Bible
or theology. Students came up at varying ages, but normally
between thirteen and sixteen^, and the course for the first seven
years was the same for all of them if they stayed so long: the
lectures and exercises necessary for taking the bachelorship and
mastership of arts. All the other courses, theology, medicine,
civil and canon law, were post-graduate courses 2, taken by only
a small proportion of students. Many left before taking their
bachelor's degree, for which four or five years' study was needed,
and the majority left on taking their mastership in arts, after
another two years^. Only religious* were exempted from this first
seven years' training in arts before other studies, and the course
consisted of grammar (i.e. classics), logic, natural philosophy,
and nothing else. These "artists," living in halls, colleges or
hoscels (as the hostels were organised at the end of the middle
ages), certainly obtained some partial familiarity with the Bible
from the religious exercises prescribed: but nothing from their
university course as such. They attended mass each day, and,
since they were fairly familiar with Latin, understood and were
familiar with the epistles and gospels: there was possibly a
certain amount of Bible reading at meals^, and compulsory
attendance at university sermons. But these exercises were on
a plane with the hearing of grace before meals, and the singing
of the Salve Regina together after the evening potation, — not
necessarily performed with much attention. Thus the mediaeval
graduate, if he went down after taking his B.A. or M.A., cer-

^ Univs. 11.604. ^ Id. n. 452-S.

3 Id. II. 455-6. * Id. II. 452; Kellaw's Reg., RS, iv, xc.

5 Id. II. 620, 625. For a Vulgate bought for reading in hall, see C.C.C.
Descrip. Cat. xi.

VI] SECULAR GRADUATES 163

tainly had the abihty to read his Vulgate and books of com- 1
mentaries upon it, but it is quite unhkely that he had ever done
so. The wills of such students, and the inventories of their be-
longings taken by the college or university, afford no instance
of a student possessing a Vulgate, or any biblical book^.

In the early days at Oxford, while the influence of Grosseteste,
Adam Marsh and the friars was strong, the friars gave all the
lectures upon the Bible at the universities, as well as in their other
houses. By Grosseteste's regulation the first morning lecture, or
place of honour, was given to the lecturer on the Bible. Roger
Bacon complained bitterly that things were worse in his day : '^

Even more grievous is it that, in the study of theology itself, holy
scripture is too much neglected, and that philosophical wrangHngs
prevaU. The expounding of holy scripture consists almost solely in
making divisions, solving apparent contradictions, and drawing
parallels.. . .The reading of holy scripture itself is of small account,
compared to the study of Peter Lombard's Sentences. For he who is
lecturing on the Sentences has the principal hour for lecturing, accord-
ing to his will ; . . . but he who is lecturing on the Bible has to beg for
an hour for lecturing, according to what shall please the lecturer on the
Sentences. Also, the lecturer on the Sentences can dispute, and is held
as a master, but he who is lecturing on the sacred text cannot dispute^.

Giraldus Cambrensis, Ralph of Beauvais and other scholars'^
also lamented that insufficient knowledge of Latin was often a
cause why even the higher clergy were sometimes unable to
understand the Bible and service books. Those graduates who
had proceeded gradually and in due order through the arts
course to other studies, could certainly read the Vulgate and
biblical commentaries: but only those who proceeded to the
theology degree ever actually studied them in their university
course, or owned them as students: and, even in their case,
mediaeval scholars complained that more attention was paid
to the Sentences than to the biblical text itself.

1 Cf. Mun. Acad., Anstey. H., RS, 1868, 543, 557, 592.

2 Opus Minor, Brewer, RS, 328. Cf. Witzel, 18, and the similar complaint
of Stephen, bishop of Doornik, ti20o: " The study of the sacred books has
fallen into neglect among us in the confusion of offices; for scholars applaud
only novelties and masters are assiduous for glory rather than doctrine,
and they write new fresh little summaries and confirmatory commentaries
about theology on all hands, and with them they soothe, retain and deceive
their hearers." Maerlanis War ken, te Winkel, 130.

' Gemma Ecclesiastica, cap. xxxvii. : " How ignorance of letters is due to
the excessive study of secular law and of logic," Gir. Cambren. 11. 348.

II — 2

l64 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

§ 4. The friars did much for the study of the Bible at the
universities, and the training of parish priests in their local
theology schools^: but there is no evidence that in England they
made use of biblical translations in either work. From their
work for ordinands, and for the laity, it would have been natural
to find them the producers, users or supporters of such trans-
lations, but the evidence is all against this. They had excellent
libraries, and some of the catalogues have survived^: but only in
one case was an English Bible found among them, — in that of
the Cambridge Dominicans at the Dissolution^. Each order of
friars, moreover, kept records of the literary works of the
members of its order, and the lists remain^: but there is
no mention of any biblical translation among them. In the
Wycliffite controversy itself, there is no lack of evidence to
shew that they were the chief enemies of vernacular scriptures^.

The Franciscans' attitude to biblical study was marked by two
features, both largely due to the work of Grosseteste and Bacon :
the encouragement of the study of the learned languages, as
subsidiary to that of the text, and the championship of the
literal interpretation, as against the three subsidiary ones.
Bacon, who died in 1294, justified the pursuit of all knowledge
for the sake of the light thus thrown on the sacred text :

"I wish," he says, "to shew. . .that there is one perfect wisdom,
from whose roots all truth proceeds, and that this is contained in the
sacred books ; for I say that there is a science which is mistress of all
others,. . .or rather, that there is one only perfect wisdom, which is
wholly contained in the holy scripture, which canon laAV and philosophy
ought to interpret^. . . . For it must needs be that all knowledge, which is
useful and necessary and worthy of the sons of God, should by the will
of God be set forth in scripture : and there is gathered together in bud
what is unfolded later in leaf, when it is expounded by the canon law
and philosophy. Wherefore, all truth is there forced into one spring,
which is borne by an abundance of streams into canon law and philo-

^ See p. 192.

- Bibliom. 79, 80; AM, 11. 760; Henry IV, ni. 445; for the two Franciscan
libraries at Oxford, Bibliom. 199, at London, 200; Dominicans at London,
id. 201.

^ See chapter xiii.

* See Dominican, Carmelite, Augustinian, etc. writers, in J. Stevens' two
additional vols, to the Monast., London, 1723, 11. 197 ff., 165 ff., 218 ff. For
friars' translations other than biblical, see W. Herbert's hymns, Carleton
Brown, 485; Rel. Antiq. i. 86.

5 See pp. 269, 289. * Witzei, 15.

VI] FRIARS 165

sophy : and there, in that root, is bound together whatever in canon
law and philosophy is elegance of branch, splendour of leaf, beauty
of flower, and abundance of fruit." "That alone in philosophy is
useful and worthy, which sacred lore deigns to require, as from a
handmaiden 1."

The whole governance of the Church, he says, ought to be
founded on the scriptures, — a sentiment in which he antedates l^
the Franciscan, William of Ockham, and the Lollards^. The
strife and contention in the world and Church nowadays arise
because the jurists borrow and derive their decisions from the
civil law, instead of from those holy scriptures, which were the
true and sole foundation of the canon law.

So fundamental was Bacon's reverence for the Bible as final
authority, that he planned the whole of his Opus Mains with
reference to it. The first two parts dealt with the relation of
theology to philosophy; the third, with languages and interpre-
tation; the fourth, with the relation of mathematics, geography
and astronomy to the scriptures; the three last with optics and
the other experimental sciences. Since in holy scriptures there
are things set down from the height of heaven to the very depth,
a theologian should know all for the sake of understanding
them^. He lamented especially the lack of a literal under-
standing of the text, due to lack of linguistic knowledge*:

Above all, the study of languages is neglected, with fatal conse-
quences to theolog3^ which is of necessity founded on writings in
foreign languages. For they cannot understand the text, nor know
the expositions of the outlines, since all are mingled together in Greek,
Hebrew and Arabic. . . . for they accept an infinite number of errors
and superfluities, and what is doubtful as certain, and dark, as self-
evident, . . . and soil theology through faults which proceed from pure
ignorance^. . . .There are in the world as many correctors, or rather
corrupters [of the Vulgate text] as there are readers, for each pre-
sumes to know that of which he is ignorant. . . . For if the letter is in
most cases false, and in others doubtful, then it must needs be that the

1 Witzel, 16, 17.

* His fellow-Franciscan, William of Ockham, struggled with the same
question of authority in the Church, but did not follow Bacon closely enough
to be a real link between him and Wycliflfe : he was sure rather of the falli-
bility of the different possible repositories of authority, than convinced that
a return to primitive Christianity was possible: see Lane Poole, Hist, of
Med. Thought, 1884, 277-81.

3 Witzel, 20. < Id. 12, 186, 187. 5 jd, 18. 19.

l66 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

literal meaning accords with it, and consequently, the spiritual mean-
ing. . . . And one root of this matter is ignorance of the languages
from which the text is translated, through which an almost infinite
number of words are omitted in the text. . . . For we theologians are
ignorant of the alphabets of these tongues, wherefore it follows that
we are ignorant of the sacred text^.

rt , Bacon was the first great mediaeval theologian to emphasise
I the value of the literal meaning of the sacred text, as against
f^\ the allegorical, the tropological (historical), and anagogical
/y***^' ,^ (mystical). All mediaeval scholars implicitly accepted this
yj^', iX fourfold interpretation of the Bible, and it was one of great
IV importance later in the controversy over the lawfulness of

translations. But the academic dispute over the relative value
of the literal, as opposed to the three other interpretations, began
much earlier than the translation controversy in England, was
carried on among orthodox scholars concurrently with it, and
survived it. The supreme value of the literal meaning, first
asserted by Bacon, was again and more clearly asserted by a
Norman Minorite, Nicholas de Lyra, who died in 1340. His
postill, or commentar\^ on the Bible became the universal text-
book for scholars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
although, even within his own order, theologians hotly opposed
his principles. His work is important as the chief link between
Bacon's attitude to the Bible, and that of the Lollards, — or, at
any rate, that of the first generation of scholarly Lollards. They
appealed to Lyra freely to justify their disregard for the secon-
dary interpretations of the text, and Purvey translated and in-
corporated large portions of Lyra's prologue into his own work.
Lyra explained in the first prologue to his commentary the four-
fold interpretation of scripture^; and he devoted the second to
emphasising the need of understanding the primary or literal one:

Further, it should be noticed that the literal sense, which is the
foundation, seems in these modem times to be much obscured;
partly through the fault of scribes, who through the similarity of

1 Fr. Witzel considers that Bacon exaggerated the corruption of the text
in mediaeval MSS.: but Denifle confirms it: see Archiv, iv. 263-311, Die
Handschriften der Bihel-Correctoren des 13. Jahrhunderts. The variations
in the text were a great difficulty to mediaeval translators: see an Italian
one, p. 46. and Purvey 's efforts to get the text of the Latin Bible " somedeal
true," p. 258.

2 Antwerp, 1634; not paginated.

VI] ROGER BACON 167

letters have in many places written otherwise than the true text has
it; partly through the influence of certain correctors, who have in
many places inserted vowel points ^ where they should not be, and
begun or ended verses where thej' ought not to begin or end; and
through this the meaning is varied, as we shall make clear, God help-
ing us, when we treat of these places. And partly also it is obscured
through our manner of translation, which differs also in many places
from the Hebrew books: even as Jerome notices in his treatise on
Hebrew problems. . . . Moreover, it should be noticed that the literal
sense is much obscured through the manner of exposition tradition-
ally handed down from others: for, though these men said many
good things, nevertheless they have touched little on the literal sense,
and have multiplied the mystical senses to such a degree, that the
literal sense has been entangled among so many expositions, and partly
suffocated. Thus they have so much subdivided the text, and read
into it so many meanings ^ that they almost bewilder the under-
standing and memory, and distract the mind from understanding the
literal sense. I propose therefore to avoid these and like errors, and
with God's help to insist upon the literal meaning, and only occasion-
ally to insert few and short mj^stical expositions, and that rarel}'.
Also I intend to adduce the declarations as to the literal sense, not
only of catholic doctors, but also of Jewdsh ones, especially of the
Rabbi Solomon, who has spoken most reasonably of all the Hebrew
doctors.

He then quotes the seven rules for the exposition of holy scrip-
ture from Isidore of Seville's De Summo Bono. Lyra's postill
was almost universally used for the light it threw upon the
Hebrew text: but some, even of those who used it, thought it
necessary to record their divergence from his views as to the
literal interpretation of scripture^. The Minorites at Oxford

^ Lyra was predominantly a Hebraist, and was referring to the great
changes in meaning made by such a procedure with a Hebrew text. His
treatment of Hebrew present and future is interesting: mediaeval scholars
apparently understood only imperfectly that Hebrew has only one form for
the two tenses. Where the Vulgate, Ex. iii. 14, read Ego sum qui sum, Lyra
noted that the tense should be future, Ego ero qui ero; cf. Lyra, i. 511.
See pp. 175-6.

^ The 1634 edition prints, after the Postilla, the Additions to it of Paul de
Sancta Maria, master in theology. The Additions, which were addressed to
the chancellor of king John of Castile, were finished by 14^9, and stated that
"Since the intention of the postillator turned chiefly upon the literal sense:
therefore it seemed above all things needful to inquire whether the literal
sense is worthier than the other senses of holy scripture: and it appears
that it is not worthier." The Additions are thus a tract twice as long as Lyra's
two prologues, which they traverse, though arguments on both sides are
given. To prove that the literal sense is not worthier, Paul claims that :
(i) "The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life." (2) The three spiritual

l68 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

continued to buy many Jewish manuscripts for their hbraries
and elsewhere^, owing to the impetus given by Lyra's work to
the study of Hebrew, and the wills of mediaeval scholars often
record possession of the postilP.

§ 5. There is no evidence again that monasteries made much
use of biblical translations for the training of novices, or the use
of the more ignorant among the brethren; and this although
there is plenty of evidence that many monks were not well
enough educated to read the Vulgate easily. Theoretically, the
monks were all a Latin reading class, and had access to libraries
of the same type as the colleges and the friaries, or even to more
extensive ones. Their primary duty was the recitation of the
divine ofhce, and piety required that they should meditate upon
the sacred scriptures; moreover, the tradition of learning, and
the great libraries, remained to the larger monastic houses after
the universities had withdrawn from them the prerogative of
scholarship. But monastic records shew that the education of
the majority of the monks cannot be measured by that of the
few scholars the monasteries continued to produce^.

The Vulgate was certainly the foundation of every monastic
library. The length of the book is much more apparent in
manuscript than printed, and it consisted generally of three or
four volumes, or sometimes of a set of separate biblical books.
It was always placed first in the monastic catalogue, and followed
by separate biblical books, the glosses upon them, the longer
comments or postills upon them, and then the patristic works
more or less closely connected with them. Besides the library

senses are nobler because the other is merely historical. (3) Aristotle says,
that if one thing exists for the sake of the other, that other is the greater.
(4) Many things in holy scripture are false, if taken literally. (5) Interior
things are nobler than exterior: as the interior grace in the sacraments is
nobler than the exterior sign. (6) Human and divine knowledge proceed
from the less perfect to the more perfect: thus the literal sense, the begin-
ning, is the less perfect. (7) The worthier sense is that which supplies the
defects of the other: thus the mystical sense steps in where human under-
standing fails. These arguments are quoted because they are so similar
to those given by opponents of biblical translations. After these Additions
is printed the reply of an anonymous Minorite, defending Lyra; then Paul
de Sancta Maria's reply to him; and then a final defence by Matthew
Thoring, minister of the Minorite province of Saxony.

1 Steven's Monast. i. 133.

- Comment, de script. Brit., Leland, J., 1709, 322; Bibliom. 182.

3 Cf. PL, 186, c. 1441; 166, cc. 1377-1446.

VI] MONKS AND THE VULGATE 169

books, the monastery possessed gospel and epistle books, which
were kept separately with the altar furniture, and not always
mentioned in the library catalogue^. The textus, or gospel book
for the mass, was usually richly bound, sometimes in gold, like
those left to the monks of Bath in 1122, and Peterborough in
1056 2. Nigel, bishop of Ely, was robbed by the soldiers of
Stephen of his precious gospel book^; Henry II, when he wished
to make a valuable present to the Carthusians of Witham,
forced the monks of Winchester to part with a Vulgate which
they had just written out with especial care, and which the
Carthusians, ignorant of its origin, received with the greatest
joy*. William Longchamps sold thirteen richly illuminated
copies of the gospels for king Richard's ransom in 1199: in-
cluding one which had belonged to king Edgar. William, the
abbot of Malmesbury and historian, stripped twelve gospel
books of their rich bindings for the same purpose 5.

The great abbeys all recorded the gifts of their benefactors,
and Vulgates and gospel books were given by a succession of
such men, ranging from king, abbot, prior or bishop in the early
centuries, to the exceptional monk who possessed one or two
books before he came, or acquired one after, in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. At S. Albans, abbot Paul, who died in
1089, caused to be written for his abbey eight psalters, an
epistle book, and three illuminated textus^; Geoffrey of Gorham,
who wrote the earliest miracle play of S. Katherine, copied a
psalter for the abbey; abbot Simon gave a Vulgate, c. 1167;
abbot John a gospel book and the Historia Scholasiica of Peter
Comestor; abbot Wallingtord, two Vulgates'. The gifts to the
monks of S. Swithun, Winchester, were very similar s. In 1283

1 Cf. Gir. Cambren. vir. 167; Rites of Durham, SS, 8; Account Rolls of
Durham, SS, 11. 426; and cf. the different catalogues of books kept con-
temporaneously at Durham in CVD.

* Som. Med. Lib. 39; Bibliom. 95; cf. id. 61, 62; CVD, 196; Trans. Bibliog.
Soc. VII. 104.

' c. 1133. Bibliom. 167.

* Somerset Carthusians, Thompson, E. M., 59. The Carthusians subse-
quently returned it, when they learned the heart-burning the incident had
caused at Winchester.

* Anglia Sacra, I. 633; Bibliom. 24.

* Lincoln Cath. Stats. 11. 829.
' Bibliom. 173-82.

« Id. 156; CVD, 127; Camb. Univ. Lib. MSS. Cat. 11. 10.

170 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

Nicholas Thorn gave to the monks of S. Augustine at Canterbury
a "Bible corrected at Paris^," and about 1331 G. de Romenal, a
monk, gave that house a Vulgate and a Historia Scholastica^ ;
about the same time John Bocton, a monk of the other Canter-
bury monastery of Christchurch, gave to his house a Vulgate, a
Bible in Latin verse, and a Historia Scholastica^. The verse Bible
may have been the poem Aurora, or it may have been that verse
history of the Old Testament composed in hexameters by a
monk of Canterbury, a manuscript of which we still possess*.
Abbot Faritius gave Abingdon a textus in 1135^; the prior of
Rochester gave a psalter written by himself in 1189^; Evesham
received various Vulgates, textus and psalters in the twelfth
century'; Bury^ Durham^ and Glastonbury^" all had similar
benefactors. The first abbot of Croxton himself copied the
greater part of the Bible, and abbot John Howton gave a Bible
in nine volumes to its library ^^ The abbey of S. Peter at Glouces-
ter had a benefaction of thirty-five books from Robert Aldsworth
of which a list was made between 1263 and 1284; it included five
Vulgates, two glossed psalters and one unglossed, a Historia
Scholastica, and some expositions of the Sunday gospels, — a re-
markable list to have belonged at that date even to one of the
higher clergy ^^ Rochester was given several Vulgates, from 1 108
onwards^^. Peterborough had a fine library^*: about 1177 abbot
Benedict had a Vulgate in twenty-one volumes, partly glossed,
written for the abbey, and in 1272 William Paris the prior had
the gospels laid beneath the foundation stone of a new chapel
there, as a symbolic act^^. We possess, besides the catalogue of

^ Canterbury, Lxxi.

2 Id. 79.

3 Id. 72.

* See Bernard, Cat. no. 2578.

* Abingdon, RS, 11. 45.

* Bibliom. 61, 62: and for several other givers of biblical books to the
priory.

' Id. 133-8. * Bury, 7, 8g.

' Rites of Durham, SS, 107, p. 8; Account Rolls, SS, 11. 432; CVD, 117.

^" Cf. J oh. Glaston., ed. Hearne, 11. 443; Bibliom. 139, 142- Som. Med.
Lib. 49.

^^ Monasticism in Staffordshire, Hibbert, F. A., 1909, 63.

12 C.C.C. Descrip. Cat. 485. " Bibliom. 61.

^* Hist. Anglic. Script. Varii, Sparke, J., 1724, 149. Trans. Bibliog. Soc.
IX. 23.

^* Bibliom. 96, gS.

VI] INDIVIDUAL MONKS 171

Peterborough, lists of the private books of various thirteenth
century abbots: Robert of Lindsay, in 1214, had six books, in-
cluding two psalters, a verse Bible, and Vincent of Beauvais*
Speculum Historiale, but no Vulgate; abbot Holderness, twelve
books, and no Vulgate; abbot Walter, c. 1233, eighteen books
including a Vulgate; abbot Robert, eighteen, and no Vulgate;
abbot Richard of London, ten, and no Vulgate ; abbot Woodford,
in 1295, twenty, and no Vulgate. The Templars in London had
two Vulgates and an epistle book^, in 1307. Thus, towards the
middle of the fourteenth century, almost all the records of
Vulgates which we possess are of those belonging to the monas-
teries: even abbots of bookish tastes would not necessarily
possess one of their own, because the manuscript was too long
and too valuable. The monks who did stud}^ it must have studied
some gloss or commentary on a biblical book much more often
than the text of the Vulgate itself, because even the great
monastic libraries usually possessed only three or four complete
copies each of the Vulgate before the days of Wycliffe. Compared
with the total number of monks, this was a very small
number, even if the Vulgate were divided into several volumes.
It would be quite a mistake to think that each monk had even a
copy of the gospels, much less a Vulgate, in constant use for
private study^. Such famiharity with the gospels as they
possessed was almost certainly derived much more from saying
and assisting at mass, and hearing the liturgical gospels; while
some familiarity with other parts of the Bible would be gained
from the lessons at mattins^.

Thus, though the Latin Bible was certainly studied, to some

^ Nor. and Norw. Archaeol. Soc. v. 90.

^ Cf. Bibliom. 26.

^ The office for mattins consisted of one "nocturn" for a feria, and three
for a Sunday or festival, each nocturn including a long passage from the
psalms, and three "lessons," from the Bible or the Fathers. The lessons
for the ferial office, of a single nocturn, were generally taken from some part
of the Bible other than the gospels. When the office had three nocturns, the
first three were biblical, but not from the gospels; the second group of three,
patristic; and the third group consisted of a verse or two from the gospels,
with a patristic homily of three lessons upon those verses. Thus only a verse
or two of the gospels was ever read at mattins, though about fifteen or
twenty verses of the prophets, epistles. Acts, Apocalypse, etc., were so read,
in the biblical nocturn. The "lessons" at the other hours consisted only
of a verse or two at each office.

172 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

extent, in the monasteries, it was not so studied by all the
monks. It might be said with tolerable certainty that there is
no period in the history of English monasticism, between the
Conquest and the Reformation, when the monks of even the
best managed monastery numbered none but those who could
read Latin freely and easily. The Usns Ordinis Cisterciensis made
allowance for illiterates in the twelfth century, and in England
after the Black Death many illiterate persons were received.
The maintenance of houses for monastic students at Oxford and
Cambridge by different orders, or groups of orders, probably did
most for maintaining the scholastic level in the monasteries : but
from the thirteenth century monastic writers sometimes pre-
scribed that disciplinary statutes should be expounded to the
monks in vulgari, which shews that they could not all be relied
on to understand even simple Latin^. Giraldus Cambrensis re-
lates two stories of unlearned abbots of his own day, — about
1200. Robert of Malmesbury was reported to the pope for
illiteracy by his own monks, and when examined by the pope's
commissioners, and requested to translate a Latin passage into
French, rendered repente, "i\ se repentit." The other abbot was
asked to translate the sentence Vere dignum et justnm est,
acqmim et saltdare, and translated aeqmim as "cheval" and
salutare as "saillavit"; some considered he ought to be deposed,
but the pope allowed him to remain abbot because he ruled his
house well and maintained good order^. The Speculum Sancti
Edmundi^ of archbishop Edmund Rich, a manual of instruction
for "us folk of religion," has a passage where a monk who knows
no letters is told to attain to "contemplation of holy writ" by
listening to sermons: yet the context shews that not the Bible,
but some religious manual would be there expounded to him.

But, although there were always many monks who could not
read Latin freely, biblical translations were very infrequently
found in monasteries before the days of Wycliffe; and this

^ Cf. Mag. Vit. S. Hugonis, RS, 37, p. 34. " Gir. Cambren. 11. 346.

' Wells, 346; Horstmann, i. 219, 23, 41. This is the earliest apparent
reference to the reading of vernacular books in refectory, of which I am
aware. But "collation" was primarily a reading, and not a meal. Love's
Mirrour, which belonged to the canons of Oseney c. 1450, is divided into
portions, but for meditation, not refectory reading, as is stated in EETS, OS,
133. I9I3. PP- 1-4; see supra, pp. 152 and 174.

VI] MONKS AND FRENCH BIBLES 173

though it was common for a monastery to possess a copy of its
rule and constitutions in the vernacular. Besides the evidence
afforded by references to gifts of books in the monastic chronicles,
where the name of the book and the giver are often carefully
stated, there are at least twenty-five existent catalogues and
books of monastic libraries for the period^, which give clear
evidence as to what books the monks possessed. Excluding
Anglo-Saxon gospel books, a few of which were still preserved
in the great abbeys 2, and to which sir Thomas More must have
alluded in his words as to the possession of English Bibles,
there is not a single reference to the possession of an English
Bible, prose psalter^, gospel book, or any other biblical book.
What is true of the monastic libraries, is true also of the five
known catalogues of college libraries, and inventories of in-
dividuals^, before Wycliffe's day.

It would perhaps be more reasonable to expect to find French
Bibles or psalters in monasteries in this period : but the number
of these cases is very small. We know of a French Bible at
Peterborough c. 1321, and part of one at Reading^; while
Christchurch, Canterbury, had four Latin and French psalters,
and one of the monks a Latin and French psalter of our Lady.
Durham in 1391 had four French psalters, out of a total of
twenty-six^. Glastonbury had a set of Sunday sermons in
French, and the nuns of Barking, c. iioo, a French verse life of
S. Catherine'. Existent manuscripts of Bibles Historiales are
commoner than those of French biblical books proper: but the
monasteries possessed in nearly every case a Historia Scholastica
in Latin, and very rarel}' in French. The small number of these
French biblical books would be realised by comparison, not
merely with Latin Bibles, but with many of the works of S.
Augustine or S. Jerome, which would occur in nearl}' every
monastic catalogue.

1 Dated between 1077 and 1389.
- See pp. 137-8.

* For a verse psalter at Norwich, see C.C.C. Catnb. Descrip. Cat. MS. 278;
Rolle's own MS. of the psalter was owned by the Hampole nuns.

* See p. 20, n. i.

* Hist. Ang. Script. Varii, Sparke, J., 170; Royal MS. 1. c. 11.

* Canterbury, in, 122, 127-9; CVD, 10: for a French Spec. S. Edntundi
183; cf. Merton, 249.

' Joh. Glaston., Hearne, 443; Ashburnham MS. 112.

174 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

Nor is there any evidence that the Bible was used for reading
in the refectories of monasteries, or that the refectory reading,
at the period, was in any language but Latin. A list of books for
refectory reading at Durham about 1100-50 still survives, but
the works are all patristic^. The Speculum Sancti Edmundi
implies the reading of a vernacular manual, — or perhaps the
exposition of a Latin one, — at collation 2; the Carthusians of
Hinton had in 1343 two books of Latin homilies for refectory
reading 3. The pseudo-Bona Ventura's Meditationes were divided,
not for refectory reading, but meditation, as the author
stated*.

§ 6. The university graduates, with many friars and monks,
can thus be roughly classed together as men to whom bibhcal
knowledge was accessible by means of the Vulgate, and Latin
commentaries and homilies. In practice the graduates, unless
they went on to the study of theology, did not concern them-
selves with the Bible at all: the biblical literature afforded by
the great hbraries was used only by those seculars who took a
theological degree, by most friars, and by some monks. The
biblical literature available for such students included glosses,
commentaries, gospel harmonies, Bible histories and compendia
of the contents of the Bible, and the apocryphal gospels ; besides
the large amount of patristic literature which dealt partly with
theological problems, and partly with biblical exegesis.

A great step forward in the study of the Vulgate was taken
when the Dominicans of Paris, under Hugh of St-Cher, or Hugo
of Vienne, with the help of a committee of fifty, compiled the
first concordance to it; a work which is the foundation of that
in use to-day^. The commonest reference books on the Bible were
the two glosses, the Glosa Ordinaria of Walafrid Strabo, of about
840, and the Glosa Interlinearis of Anselm of Laon, of about
1 100^. The Glosa Ordinaria gave brief commentaries drawn from
the Fathers upon each verse : it was probably the source of most
of the patristic quotations in mediaeval sermons and homilies.
A much more elaborate catena of patristic quotations was com-

1 CVD, 9. 2 See p. 172. ^ Som. Med. Lib., Hinton.

* Bonav. Opera, 1609, vi. 401.

^ See Concord. Hugonis Cardinalis, Venice, 1768.

^ See Eng. Bible, Hope Moulton, W., 27.

VI] BIBLICAL COMMENTS 175

piled for the psalter by Peter Lombard, and a very much longer
one on the four gospels by S. Thomas Aquinas, the so-called
Catena Aurea^.

Every Hbrary contained also a large number of commentaries
on the different biblical books, ranging from those of the Fathers
to those of mediaeval theologians themselves. The comments
of Origen, S. John Chrysostom, S. Jerome, S. Augustine, the
Venerable Bede, S. Anselm, Hugh of St-Cher, S. Bonaventura,
and S. Thomas Aquinas were the most frequent, and occur in
mediaeval catalogues with almost the regularity of the Vulgate
itself: but the works of other mediaeval theologians were also
popular. These were sometimes the substance of the lectures
delivered at the universities on the biblical text, in the course
of graduation in theology, and especially in the case of friars.
Typical of such works were the comments of Nicholas Gorham,
an Oxford Dominican who wrote postills on every book of the
Bible, and Robert Holcote. a Cambridge Dominican who died
in the Black Death^. But after 1340 the commentary most in
demand by what we should now call "scientific scholars" was
the above-mentioned work of Nicholas de LjTa, the Franciscan.

Study of the biblical text in the middle ages was based upon
these and similar commentaries : but another very popular form
of study was the making, reading, expanding, analysing and
summarising of biblical harmonies^. Harmonies of the gospels
were naturally the most widely studied, but compendia of the
whole Bible, or harmonies of biblical and secular history, came
in for much attention. The few widely known Latin harmonies
were generally re-edited by later scholars with the object of

^ See pp. 177, 271. A "libellus de sacris scripturis tractandis" in Bodl.
115 begins: "There are certain rules for the handUng of the scriptures,"
but does not actually treat of mediaeval biblical study: it appears to be a
chapter of some patristic work. Digby, 154, flE. 26-, has a Latin tract "On
the nature and worthiness and interpretation of the scriptures," but throws
no fresh light on methods of study. Nor does Queen's Coll. O.xf. 389, f. 2,
which has a fragment "de modo legendi s. scripturas."

^ See Mandonnet in V, 11. 1466.

* Concordattcia bibliorum or evangelistarum, generally means a gospel
harmony, not a concordance in the modern sense. Cf. Descrip. Cat. King's
Coll. 77, Concordancia evangelistarum, in a 1452 catalogue; and King's MS.
40, Concordancia Bibliorum. An Exempla Bibliorum, or Liber de exemplis
s. scripturae means the work of the Dominican Nicholas de Hannapis,
patriarch of Jerusalem 1288-91, cf. Addit. MS. 36,984.

176 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

making them more and more comprehensive and compendious,
while at the same time they were summarised, analj^sed, and
arranged in the form of alphabetical indexes by the diligent
scholars of particular libraries^. The original forms were widely
spread: the later expansions and contractions, though very
numerous, nearly always exist as single manuscripts, and must
have been the scholastic apparatus of particular students. Of
the Latin gospel harmonies 2, the Diatessaron of Tatian was the
earliest. S. Augustine's tract, De consensu Evangdiorum, was
not precisely a harmony, but a discussion of the points of
similarity and difference in the four gospels; it was very largely
used. The first important mediaeval harmony was that of Victor
of Capua, which used Tatian's work as a basis: but it was not
common in English libraries. The two Latin harmonies most
commonly found there were those of Zachary Chrysopolitanus,
and Clement of Llanthony. Other gospel harmonies, which
confined themselves much less strictly to the Bible narrative,
were those attributed to S. Bonaventura, and Ludolphus of
Saxony.

The harmony known as that of Zachary Chrysopolitanus
was probably written by a "master of the schools" at the
cathedral of Besan9on in 1134^. The manuscripts of this and
Clement of Llanthony's harmony generally contain a table for
finding the liturgical epistles and gospels in the text, in all
probability for private study and not for use at the altar*. This
shews that the later tables of lessons in manuscripts of Wychffite
New Testaments were much more probably for private study,
following this old precedent, than to enable the reader to follow
the lessons actually at mass; and much less were they meant
to be read aloud at mass after the Latin epistle and gospel.

^ Cf. for expansion and summary of C. of Llanthony's Unum ex Quattuor,
p. 177, n. I ; for the Minorite William Norton's alphabetical table of Lyra's
glosses, Merton, 12, § 7, written in 1403; for a "compendium" of the
Historia Scholasiica made by the Carmelite Walter Hunt, Stevens' Monast.
II. 174; for a Bible harmony by an unknown "MaUiam," also probably
'a summary of the Hist. Schol., Harl. MS. 3858.

^ See V, II. 2099. The Diat. was used in a Latin translation.

3 PL, 186, where the harmony is printed ; cf. Stowe MS. 8; C.C.C. MSS.
475, 27. For a table of lessons, Stowe, 8, f. 190.

* Epis. visitations shew that churches had to be provided with gospel
and epistle books: gospel harmonies would not have been sufficient.

VI] LATIN BIBLE HARMONIES 177

Clement of Llanthony's harmony was much more popular
than any other Latin harmony in England: libraries of any
considerable size contained it as a matter of course. The learned
Franciscan, William of Nottingham, who died in 1291, prepared
a new edition of it, and a certain chaplain of archbishop Arundel
was moved to compile a summary and alphabetical table of its
contents, which he dedicated to ArundeP.

The Meditationes Vitae Christi of the pseudo-Bonaventura has
been mentioned earlier. The Magna Vita Jesu Christi of
Ludolphus of Saxony was written about 1330, by a friar who
became a Carthusian of Strassburg. It had all the doctrinal
implications in the life of Christ drawn out to great length ; it is
more intellectual than the Meditationes, and does not merely
give patristic glosses verbatim, like the Catena Aurea. It was
often translated into the vernacular, though not into English, —
probably because the English form of the Meditationes was then
so popular. Besides these well known gospel harmonies, others
less well known were probably composed but not copied^.

Combinations of biblical and sacred history were also popular,
especially since universal history was drawn from so few sources
besides the Bible. The Historia Scholastica of Peter Comestor^
was so popular, that by 1480 the monks of Christchurch,
Canterbury, had accumulated as many as twenty-one copies
from different donors. The book had no doctrinal or mystical
glosses, but was a summary, in the author's own words, of
biblical history and additional information about such person-
ages as Herod, Antipater, Archelaus, Augustus, etc. A good
many mediaeval scholars occupied their time by making
abbreviations of it, especially of the part dealing with the
gospels; the tendency was to leave out the secular information,
and abridge the events of our Lord's life between the baptism
and Passion, — omitting, that is, most of the parables and
miracles*. It was often translated into the vernacular, the most

^ Laud Misc. 165, ff. 1-588. For Nottingham's harmony and its pro-
logue, see Bernard, Cat. nos. 1562, 2067; Rawl. C. 572. Thomas Langley
gave Nottingham's work to Durham, in 1437, CVD, 119; Christchurch,
Canterbury, had two copies of this "gloss on the Unum ex Quattuor,"
Canterbury, 95, 105.

^ Cf. that of brother Jordan, CVD, 182; and Canterbury, 159, 165.

^ PL, 198, c. 1050; Lounsbury, 11. 373.

* Cf. the summaries in Laud Lat. 109, Univ. 42, Magd. Oxt. 53.

D.w.B. 12

178 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

famous case being the French translation by Guyart Desmouhns
in 1 27 1. This was later combined with French translations of
the biblical books, and was much commoner than these books
alone^.

The Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais carried uni-
versal history down to a later date than the Historia Scholastica,
going down to 1243.

The Compendium Sensus Litter alis T otitis Divinae Scripturae^
of Peter Aureoli is a good example of what advanced biblical
study meant to theologians of the early fourteenth century.
Peter Aureoli was born about 1280, graduated in theology at
Paris about 13 14, and then became lector in the Minorite
convent of Toulouse. Just at the same time, in the Dominican
friary, the famous inquisitor of Toulouse was trying to purge
France of the Waldensians and the Fraticelli. Aureoli was
appointed in 1316 to lecture on the Sentences at Paris, perhaps
the most honoured theological professorship of the day: and
he was made minister of the province of Aquitaine in 1319,
and bishop of Aix in 1321, dying however the year^fter. His
treatise divided the Bible into eight parts, and was marked
by a strong tendency to rhythmic classification. The seven
visions of the Apocalypse are shewn to have been fulfilled by
the seven successive periods in the Church's history, from the
time of the early persecutions under Julian the Apostate till
the day of Judgment. Though the book probably owed its
origin to Aureoli's desire that the clergy should be better
acquainted with the Bible, that they might cope the better
with the Waldensians, it ignored all the questions which the
Waldensians raised.

Compendia of Bible history in Latin verse were also often

^ Berger, i-ix. : cf. supra, p. 71-

2 Compendium . . .fr. Petro Aureoli Ord. Min., ed. fr. Philiberto Seeboeck,
Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi), 1896, 4s.net. This is an excellent cheap edition
of a book most useful to those who wish to reconstruct for themselves
university lectures on the Bible at the date. The book was still used in the
fifteenth century: cf. Merton MS. 12, which WilHam Romsey, fellow of
Merton in 1448, had wTitten "at his own expense," presumably for the use
of the college. Richard Barre, bishop of Ely, possessed a Compendium,
Harl. 3255. The book was very often called a Breviarium s. scripturae,
cf. Merton 12, f. 21 ; CVD, xxxix. 146; Nicholls' Leicester, appendix i. 107;
Canterbury, 168.

VI] LATIN BIBLES IN VERSE 179

found in the libraries, especially a long poem called Aurora^, or
from its opening words, the Quattuor est primus. This was a
paraphrase of the whole Bible in elegiac verse, except Canticles,
Lamentations, Job and the Acts, which were in hexameters^.
Petrus de Riga, its author, was a prior of S. Denis at Rheims,
in the late twelfth century, and his poem was praised in fervid
language by a canon of Autun, as "fiHing the heart with light,
like the sun shining upon the world^." Enthusiasm soon com-
piled a summary of the poem, also in verse, and "versified
Bibles*," referring to this summary or the Aurora, were frequent
in mediaeval libraries. The surprising popularity of the Atirora
may have been partly due to unfamiliarity with the Vulgate
text, or to that craving for theological novelties which so many
writers deplored, as tending to oust the study of the Bible itself.

Another less frequent verse harmony was that of the gospels,
Canones Evangelistarum^ , which had a great effect on the
development of miracle plays, and of sacred art in the later
middle ages. Another verse harmony which became widely
spread in vernacular translations was the thirteenth century
Speculum Humanae Salvationist, which has much comparison
of the gospel characters with Old Testament types.

The apocryphal gospels were never, of course, seriously studied
for purposes of dogmatic theology: but information from them
was incorporated into the Historia Scholastica, and especially

^ Extracts are printed in Polycarpi Leyseri Historia Poetarum et Poema-
tum Medii Aevi, Halle, 1721, pp. 692-, including principally the Recapi-
tulation, sometimes attributed to P. de Riga himself.

- Id. 696. 3 Id. 748.

* Laud Misc. 576; LI. 5. 15; C.C.C.Camb. 107; Bernard, Ca/. Durham, 541.
Quoted as the Aurora, Canterbury, 165; five in the 1247 cat. at Glastonbury,
Joh. Glaston., Hearne, 11. 423-44; Eng. Mon. Lib., Hunter, 6, etc. For Biblia
versifies, see Canterbury, 104, 109, 114; for expositiones Bibliae versifice, id.
129; for two Biblia versificata, id. 196-8; for adaptacio veteris et novi testa-
menti versifice, id. Christchurch, no. 246.

^ Bernard, Cat. no. 1853; no. 1953, Canones seu harmonia quattuor
Evangelistarum ; Rawlinson, A. 384, § 2; cf. Rawl. C. 288, f. 14: Canones
Evangeliorum : versus super contenta librorum. The incipit is, Quattuor
est primus.

* Printed by Giinther Zainer, Augsburg, c. 1470. The author, perhaps
Johannes Andreas, in another poem (the Epithalamium , Digb)', 65, ff. 79—
102) refused to give his name. Andreas died in 1348, and wa^ the author of
the Speculum Marie Virginis, often found in connexion with the Spec. Hum.
Sal. See Madan, Sum. Cat. iv. MSS. 21,778, 22,002. Cf. MSS. C.C.C. Oxford,
i6i; All Souls, 20; Douce, 204.

12 — 2

l8o PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

into the lives of our Lady which were so popular by themselves,
and so frequent a preliminary to lives of Christ. The Evangelium
Nicodemi, in its Latin form, was perhaps the best known: it is
otherwise described as the Gesta Salvatoris, or Acta Pilati de
passione et resurrectione Jesii Christi : sometimes it was described
simply as the gospel "found in the praetorium of Pontius Pilate
by Theodosius the Emperor i." This is a sort of gospel harmony
of the Passion and Resurrection, containing little extra-biblical
detail in dealing with the Passion, but much in deahng with the
Resurrection. In the story of the Passion, the man born blind,
Veronica, a woman present at the wedding at Cana, and different
spectators of His miracles, plead for Christ at His trial, in a long
passage inserted into the narrative at that point. It is from the
description of the descent to Hades that the gospel was best
known: the saints Carinus and Lenthius, walking in Jerusalem,
describe to Nicodemus, Joseph and Gamaliel the descent to
Hades, or "harrowing of hell" by Christ, and write it in books
of parchment; they then go in procession to Paradise, and are
met by Enoch and Elias. Clerks drew from this poem largely
in arranging miracle plays, which had a great influence in
forming the scriptural conceptions of the less educated classes.
This list of books, — the glosses, commentaries, Bible histories
and compendia, practically exhausts the tale of books available
for biblical study during the period. The most varied in number
and character were the commentaries: the others were stock
reference books, found in almost every large library. But though
mediaeval scholars had this apparatus available, even the
graduate clergy did not always avail themselves of it, or make
themselves familiar with the biblical text, as is shewn sometimes
by surprising misquotations. The mediaeval habit of quoting
from memory may be responsible for some of these, but some
are not merely verbal inaccuracies. The knight of La Tour
Landry emploj^ed two priests and two clerks to help him in
editing his collection of edifying tales; but the biblical ones are
sometimes surprisingly inaccurate, — the stor}^ of Ruth has
nothing in common with the biblical narrative except the names.
A fourteenth century translator even of the liturgical gospels,

1 Codex Apoc. i. 213 flf.

VI] MEDIAEVAL BIBLICAL STUDENTS l8l

which should have been famihar, could speak of the raising of
Jairus's son, throughout. One chronicler, complaining of the
Taxatio of Nicholas IV, stated that " Joseph took all the land
of Egypt, except that of the priests^" In some Middle-English
verses for Palm Sunday, " bishop Caiaphas " is mentioned, and a
treatise on dreams refers to David and his " boke of swevenyng," -^-^ ^
or Book of Dreams^. Fitzherbert, in his Book of Husbandry^
quotes S. Paul as recommending economy, " Leste thou spende
in shorte space that thynge, that thou shouldest lyue by long."
The Speculum Humanae Salvationis, 1324, mentions Joseph's
sacrifice of his son, instead of Jephthah's sacrifice of his
daughter*. Lydgate the monk wrote somewhat later than this
period, and was particularly learned in the scriptures; but he
could represent the Egyptians as suffering from twelve plagues
instead of ten*.

§ 7. The references of contemporaries to those whom they
considered great biblical students are interesting. S. Hugh of z/'
Lincoln, who died about 1200, had lived with the Carthusians
before his appointment as bishop, and he preserved the same
saintliness of life afterwards. After the recitation of prime, he
had passages from the gospels read aloud in Latin, so that the
four gospels were gone through in the four seasons of the year,
while the other canonical scriptures were read through at night
office and at table^. Archbishop Lanfranc was greatly concerned
with the state of the Vulgate text, and ordered it to be carefully
corrected, as did another learned Norman bishop, Gundulph of
Rochester. The great humanist scholar, John_of_Salisbury, re-
garded the seven rules of Ticonius, as set forth in the De Doctrina
Christiana, as classical for biblical study', so did Lyra and
Purvey later. He emphasised the value of the subsidiary mean-
ings of the text^; "for although the superficial meaning of the
letter be accommodated to a single sense, a multitude of mys-

^ Capes, 27.

* Rel. Antiq. 261.

' Ed. Skeat, W. W., 1892, p. gg, on which occurs also a wrong attribution
to "Solomon."

* Christian Iconography, Didron, trans. Millington, 203.
' Lounsbury, 11. 190.

« Mag. Vita, RS, 138, 341.

' Policraticus, ed. Webb, C. C. I., Oxford, 1909, 11, 153.

* Id. 144.

l82 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

teries lie hid within : and often allegory edifies faith, and history
morals, and the mystical meaning leads heavenwards in many
manners." Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln from 1235 to
1253, was a great student of the scriptures himself, as well as
their exponent to others.

When king Henry asked him, as if in wonder, where he had learnt
the nurture in which he instructed the sons of nobles and peers of the
realm, whom he kept about him as pages (since he was not descended
from noble lineage, but from humble parents), he is said to have
answered fearlessly: "In the house and guest chambers of greater
kings than the kings of England ": because he had learnt, from under-
standing the scriptures, the manner of life of David, Solomon, and
other kings 1.

Grosseteste's own familiarity with the scriptures is shewn
again in his letters, which are full of biblical images, especially
from the Old Testament 2. His constant efforts to improve the
learning of his parish priests, and their scriptural knowledge,
will be mentioned later^: but his care for the instruction of all
classes came out in other directions. He wrote to the regent
masters of theology at Oxford, warning them to make the books
of the Old and New Testaments the fundamentals of their study,
"all your reading, especially at such a time, ought to be of the
books of the Old and New Testaments*," and he spoke elsewhere
of the "irrefragable authority of scripture^." He wrote to a
canon of Lincoln, warning him not to neglect pastoral duties for
more advanced theological lecturing:

It is much to be feared that by seeking to teach certain scholars
in Paris the subtleties of wisdom, you will thereby refuse to teach
Christ crucified to a great multitude of simple souls: for you will not
minister to your cathedral scholars solid food [instruction on the
Sentences and perhaps the text of the gospels and epistles] , nor to the
simple flock of Christ the milk of simple doctrine [instruction on the
commandments, creeds, mortal sins, etc.]^.

( Although Grosseteste was probably of all mediaeval bishops
the most anxious to extend knowledge of the scriptures, he went
no further than his contemporaries in the use of the vernacular
for instruction. His circle was French-speaking; he himself

^ EETS, OS, 32, VIII. 2 Epistolae, RS, xlvii.

* See p. 195. * Fuse. Rev. Exp. 11. 393.

6 Episi. 18. * Fasc. Rer. Exp. 11. 340.

VI] GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS 183

possessed a copy of the ManueldesPechiez^, and he is said to have
translated the pater noster and ave for lay use. He wrote the
Chasteau d'Amour'^ in French for the instruction of a court lady,
and wrote various letters of instruction to the different "Alien-
ores" of the de Montfort family: but his name has never been
mentioned in connexion with any French or English biblical
translation.

Giraldus Cambrensis was another scholarly ecclesiastic whose
views are of interest, because he often insisted on the insufficient
knowledge of Latin, which made his contemporary clergy unable
to expound the scriptures. His evidence applies to the period
of the rise of Waldensianism, for he was born in 1147, and died
in 1223. He was certainly vain, but there is no reason to dis-
believe the various cases that he cited:

"For you will find," he says, "such defects of learning, not only
in the lower priesthood, but even in the higher: in abbots, priors, the
deans of great churches, and archbishops. . . . Also, there is the case
of the archbishop who began his semion thus: Audite et intelligite,
vos omnes qui estis in isto sacro synodo, and when one of his clerks whis-
pered a, a, he was not impatient of correction, but added, in ista
sacra synoda, and when the clerk still whispered, o et a, he repeated
for the third time, in isto sacro synoda^."

The same archbishop, he said, was once presiding over an
ecclesiastical court at Oxford, in the presence of many learned
scholars, and when the same titter arose over the archbishop's
eccentricities in declensions, one of those sitting near rebuked
them by saying, "What are you whispering among yourselves?
that is the ancient grammatical form," at which they could not
suppress the laughter with which they had at first struggled out
of reverence to his person. And another time, when S. Thomas
of Canterbury was in exile, those English bishops who were con-
sidered most eloquent and learned were sent to pope Alexander
III, to support the king's case and weaken the archbishop's.
And when they were presented, and were relating the arguments
which they had planned and thought out, there was not one of
them who did not commit a barbarism or solecism in such a

1 Bernard, Cat. no. 2313. * Wells, 366.

' Gir. Cambren. 11 345, cf. Visitation of Sarum. S. Francis to Dante,
Coulton, G. G., 298, and Grosseteste's rejection of Passelewe as an unfit and
unlearned candidate for the see of Chester, Episiolae, RS, Ix.

l84 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

presence : Oportuit, oportebat, oportebatur, oportuerunt haec fieri,
said one who seemed more eloquent than the rest, but did not
actually understand the use of an impersonal verb. Peace,
brother, peace, said the pope, for neither should such things have
occurred, nor such words have been said. These and other stories
are supported by that decree of the fourth Lateran council,
which remarked that ignorance in a bishop was scandalous,
and not, for the future, to be tolerated.

Archbishop Peckham, himself a Franciscan and full of the
traditions of his order, made great efforts also to improve clerical
education, and the sermons of parish priests. In a letter to the
bishop of Tusculum, dated 1284, he lamented over the frequent
appointments of un-preaching bishops, as elsewhere over the
ignorance of the clergy. He described in his letter the seven
chief abuses of the Church of his day : the sixth is the " vilipensio
Evangelicarum," or small esteem in which the contents of the
gospels are held.

For according to the doctrine of saints, a bishop's office consists
chiefly in the doctrine of the Word of God, whence the episcopal order is
called by the holy Fathers, the ' ' order of preachers ' ' : yet in celebrating
elections or conferring dignities, no mention is made of the office of
preaching; and since in this respect no question is asked as to what
the gospels say, but as to what the common gloss clamoureth, the
commandments of God are made of none effect for the traditions of
men. Hence the study of wisdom is everywhere forsaken, and all
men run after those branches of knowledge which bring worldly
reward^.

He himself nevertheless continued the study of the scriptures,
and we have in 1283 a correspondence between him and the
provincial of the friars preacher, who have, he declares, unjustly
detained a Vulgate worth 113 marks (or over £1000 modern
money), which he exhorts them to return-.

Bishop Stapledon of Exeter, in spite of his preoccupation
with the royal exchequer, found time to translate the pater
noster, ave and creed into French, for lay use^; about the same
time a "master Adam of Exeter" composed a French exposition

1 Reg. Johannis Peckham, RS, 77, Martin, C. T., 1884, 11. 696; see also
p. 196, for his Ignorantia Sacerdotum.

2 Id. II. 542.

' Register, Hingeston-Randolph, 565.

VI] OWNERS OF VULGATES 185

on the pater noster^. Stapledon had a considerable hbrar3^
for he had two chests made to carry his books, and at his
death bequeathed ninety-one volumes, three of which were
Vulgates^.

There is no record of any English ecclesiastic who owned an \y

English or French Bible before the days of Wycliffe, apart
from the abbot of Peterborough who gave his monastery a !
French Bible which had perhaps belonged to him privately. |
This contrasts with the number of known owners of Vulgates
among bishops and the greater ecclesiastics during the same
period ; for, besides those monks or abbots who caused Vulgates
to be written for their houses, there are more than twenty known
owners of Vulgates between the Conquest and Wycliffe's day.
The wills of lesser personages than great nobles and bishops are
infrequent before 1300, so that it is not possible to say whether
archdeacons and cathedral dignitaries commonly owned a
Vulgate before that date. They would not necessarily own more
than the different service books, though they would probably
have access to a Vulgate in a librar5^

Twelve early donors of Vulgates or textus to monasteries were
bishops: Wilham de Carilef of Durham, 1095, Gundulph of
Rochester, 1108, John of Bath, 1122, Nigel of Ely, about 1133,
Hugh Pudsey of Durham, 1194, Longchamps of Ely, 1199,
Richard Chandos of Chichester, 1253, archbishop Peckham,
1283, Nicholas of Winchester, 1299, Richard Gravesend of
London, 1303, Stapledon of Exeter, 1326, Grandisson of Exeter,
1369*. Seven were either cathedral clergy, or connected with
the universities. Nicholas, archdeacon of Bedford and canon of
Lincoln, gave a large Vulgate to Lincoln minster about 1180;
\ Roger of Ely, dean of York, gave several Vulgates to the uni-
versity of Oxford in 1225; Thomas de la Wile "master of the
schools at Sarum," or chancellor, owned a Vulgate in 1254;

^ Pembroke, 112, f. 71. ^ Register, 561.

' Bibliom. 68 and CVD, 117; Bibliom. 61; Som. Med. Lib. 39; Bibliom.
167 a.nd Anglia Sacra, i. 622; AM, 11. 859; Bibliom. 70 and CVD, 118; Avglia
Sacra, i. 633; TV, 762; Register Peckham, RS, 77, il. 542; CVD, 127; Hale
and Ellacombe in Camden Soc, New Series, x. 1874, 50; Register Stapledon,
Hingeston-Randolph, 564; Trans. Bibliog. Soc. vii. 104. For later bishops,
see Brantyngham, Register, in 1394; in 1403, Wykeham, TV, 768; 1404,
Skyrlaw, CVD, 127; 1416, Mascall, Register, CYS, v.; 1423, Bowet. TE, in.
74, 76; 1435, FitzHugh, North Country Wills, 42; 1437, Langley, CVD, 120.

l86 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

Henry Melsaneby had a textus about 1260; Michael Northburgh,
archdeacon of Suffolk, bequeathed a small Vulgate in 1361;
Henry Leicester, fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
bequeathed one in 1376, and Thomas Farnylawe, chancellor of
York, two in 1378^. From this time onwards, the wills of canons
and other higher ecclesiastics would usually include a Vulgate;
and whereas in the earlier cases, all the Vulgates were left to
corporations, or were, with one exception, entailed, Vulgates
were now sometimes bequeathed to private individuals uncon-
ditionally 2.

No recorded will of a secular priest mentions any English or
French psalters, or any English or French devotional book,
before the days of Wycliffe, though in 1380 John Katerington,
canon of S. Mary at Litchwick, gave an English Legenda to that
church^, and in 1385 Richard Ravenser, archdeacon of Lincoln,
left to lady Isabella Fryskney "the book of Apocalypse which
she has of mine*," which, from the context, was probablj^ in
Anglo-French.

Thus in answer to the question, to what extent the highest and
best educated of the secular clergy, the friars and the monks,
were familiar with the text of the Bible, it appears that those
graduates who proceeded to the degree in theology were usually
familiar with it, though an even greater emphasis was laid on
their familiarity with the Sentences. The training of friars made
them, as a class, more familiar with the Bible than any others :
the acquaintance of monks with it differed from great knowledge
to almost complete ignorance. The Vulgate was so valuable a
book that few individuals except bishops possessed it before
1300; but it had become cheap enough for most cathedral clergy
to possess one before 1400. There is no evidence in wills for the
use of English scriptures before the days of Wycliffe, and there

1 Line. Cath. Stats. 11. 787; CVD, xxxi. ; Hist. Antiq. Oxon. 11. 48 and
Bibliom. 27; Casley's Cat. 4; CVD, 196; London Wills, ii. 6i : C.C.C. Descrip.
Cat. XI.; TE, i. 102-3. For later Vulgate owners, see chapter xiii.

2 Which shews the greater cheapness of the books in the later periods.
Earlier testators sometimes bequeathed the Vulgate to an individual for
life, specifying the monastery to which it should pass, or sometimes be-
queathed it to an individual and his heirs. The monasteries, or cathedral
chapters, were the recipients in most cases.

^ Parker Coll. 34.

* Early Line. Wills, 68.

VI] OWNERS OF FRENCH OR ENGLISH BIBLES 187

is only a single case of the ownership of a French Bible by a
monastery, and none by a secular priest; the records of the use
even of French psalters are very scanty. There is nothing in the
history of translations in England to shew that they were ever
encouraged by any section of the orthodox: there is no move-
ment, for instance, comparable to that of the Gottesfreunde in
Germany. In that country, a provincial constitution of the
Dominicans had bidden the brothers send their most learned
lecturers to preach in the sisters' chapels: and certain of the
laity were, in consequence, led on to practise lives of meditation
and prayer. In England, the Dominican brothers were not
bound by their constitutions^ to direct the convents of Domini-
can nuns, and perhaps in consequence there was no similar
demand for English scriptures among the devout laity. Though
French translations sometimes existed in the libraries of the
greater nobles and ladies, there was no movement to encourage
their use by the priesthood: while, except in the case of the
psalter, no English translation existed.

^ See Archiv, 11. 644: Hermann of Minden compiled the Domiaican con-
stitutions in question only for his own province.

CHAPTER VII

Pre-Wycliffite biblical study by clerks :
(b) parish priests

§ I. If the typical parish priest between the eleventh and the
fourteenth centuries were not the graduate of a university, where
did he get his education, and in what did it consist? If he did not
own a Vulgate after he settled down to work in his parish (as in
most cases before 1370-80 we have every reason to believe he
did not), what biblical or theological training did he get before
ordination? The questions belong to a post-Tridentine age,
which vaguely assumes that theological or biblical knowledge
of some sort was always a necessary prelude to ordination,
whether acquired in a diocesan seminary, or merely exhibited
in an examination before ordination. Actually, the attainments
of the mediaeval parish priest should be viewed rather as a link
between those of the Anglo-Saxon and the post-Tridentine
priest : for, though many mediaeval priests were no doubt better
educated than the Anglo-Saxon ones, the minimum educational
demands for institution to a benefice seem to have remained
the same in both periods: ability to recite a few necessary for-
mulae in Latin by heart, and to read and sing the Latin mass.

It is possible to say with some certainty to what extent a
normal parish priest was acquainted with the biblical text before
his ordination, because a certain amount of evidence has been
already collected as to the educational course in the various
schools he might have attended. Since lay patronage was so
common, and the minimum standard of education for institution
to a benefice so low, the candidate for institution might have
attended only an elementary school, or he might have attended
any of the various grades intermediate between that and the
university. He might have attended the university itself for a
year or two, but in that case his studies have been described in
the previous chapter.

There is no evidence whatever that biblical translations were

CH. VII] THEIR EDUCATION 189

used for instruction in any school of any kind before the days of
WycHffe (or between his time and the Reformation). Scholars
learned to construe the Latin psalms, ave, or pater noster,
into French or English, but there is no reference to the use of
any biblical translation in school 1. English ones were non-
existent, but French ones, or Bibles Historiales, though expensive
and rare, might conceivably have been used, had it been con-
sidered generally desirable that young grammar or theology
scholars should be acquainted with the sacred text: but there
is no evidence at all that French translations were actually
so used. Such acquaintance with the Bible as the mediaeval
parish priest possessed was gained from the Latin Bible, not
from translations.

A mediaeval candidate for ordination m.ight have previously
attended a small parish elementary school, a grammar school, a
cathedral theology school, a friary theology school, or possibly
no school at all. The references in episcopal registers to "enor-
mously illiterate" holders of benefices, or would-be holders,
perhaps refer to some younger sons, educated as lay persons and
not as clerks, and finally provided for by the gift of a living from
some relation or patron : such persons might never have attended
any school. But the majority of resident parish priests were prob-
ably the children, not of the nobihty, but of small freeholders
or craftsmen, who had availed themselves of the educational
ladder offered by the different schools, and scholarships.

It is now generally recognised that the monasteries rarely had
schools for secular children after the eleventh century, but only
for the "oblates" who were destined to become monks, and who
in most cases never left the convent precincts until they took
the vows^. The larger houses had almonry and song-schools
where a small number of boys were maintained, chiefly to sing
treble in the feast-day services: and abbots occasionally re-
ceived the children of noble parents to be trained in their houses
as pages, as any other great noble might do. But there were no

1 There is no evidence that the north midland glosses were lectures
delivered in school, as Miss Powell suggests, see chapter xn. They were
moreover contemporary with Wycliffe, and probably produced under the
influence of the Wycliffite movement.

* Coulton, G. G., Mediaeval Studies, x.

190 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

schools for secular boys in the modern sense, either for day
scholars or boarders.

In the lowest grade of school, the small parish or elementary
school, the children indeed learned to read upon the psalter or
primer^, but there was of course no further question of the use
of the biblical text. They were "ABC children 2," as Grosseteste
called them, and they were taught largely with a view to their
being able to sing in church, like the little clergeon in the
Prioresses Tale^.

At the grammar school again, the next grade, there is no
evidence that children learned to translate the Latin Bible be-
fore the days of Wycliffe. They learned Latin, which was a step
towards it, but the Vulgate was not among the books they used.
As late as 1357 the bishop of Exeter reprehended all the arch-
deacons of his diocese, because clerks, or those who daily re-
peated mattins and the hours of the blessed Virgin, did not
understand what they said. He complained that boys in school,
after they had learned to read, or say, even very imperfectly,
the pater noster, ave, creed, and the hours of the blessed
Virgin, passed on at once to other school books: "And so it
happens that when they are grown up they do not understand
v/hat they say or read every day." He then ordered, with what
effect on the routine of the grammar school is not known, that

boys henceforth should leave other studies, and be made to con-
strue and understand the pater noster, ave, creed, mattins, and the
hours of the blessed Virgin, and decline the words there, and parse
them, before they go on to other books*.

Later on, in the middle of the Wycliffite controversy, one writer
refers to a practice of translating the epistles and gospels in
schools, as well as the psalms^: and in this case it is not very

^ Educ. Char. 347; bibliog. in A. F. Leach's Schools of Med. England,

1915-

- And see p. 207. " Pueros abcdarios," Fasc. Rer. Exp. 11. 402.

3 II. 46-9. The frequency, nature, and connexion with the grammar
schools of these small schools has not yet been fully worked out. The parish
priest, according to his will and ability, sometimes taught small children
for nothing, or was sometimes paid to take private pupils.

* Educ. Char. 317.

5 In li. 6. 26. In the fifteenth century chantry schools also did something
for the training of secular ordinands : but though chantries were beginning
to be founded before Wycliffe 's day, there is no record of the founding of any

VII] FRIARY SCHOOLS 19I

clear whether the writer is referring to some grammar, or
cathedral theology school.

There were, however, in the thirteenth century, besides the
grammar schools, a considerable number of cathedral and friary
schools^, where theologj^ was taught, and it is from such schools
that the bulk of the inferior secular clergy must have received
their education. Before the rise of the universities, the cathedral
schools had been more important than the monastic schools for
the training afforded to seculars, but the universities drew from
them, as from the monasteries, the best scholars and teachers
of the thirteenth century. The papac}^ however, saw in the
cathedral schools the best means of training the secular clergy,
and did what it could to encourage them: the provision of
salaries for the grammar master and theology master was always
the difficulty 2. In early days the cathedral school taught both
Latin, or grammar, and theology, but b^' about 1200 the gram-
mar and theology schools had usually become separate. Lectures
in the cathedral theolog}^ schools were apparently always given
in Latin, and the subject, as at the universities, was the Sentences
of Peter Lombard, and instruction on the elements of the faith.
There is no e\adence that before the days of Wycliffe the cathe-
dral schools afforded lectures on the biblical text, such as formed
a small part of the course for the doctorate of divinity in the
universities; or that, as early as this, theology students were
taught to translate the Sunday gospels and epistles and make
sermons upon them. In Wycliffe's own day, however, such a
practice seems to have begun, to judge by the evidence of one
of his followers: but how wideh^ it obtained, and whether it were
the direct result of the Wycliffite movement, which influenced
orthodox teachers as well as avowed heretics, is doubtful.

The Mendicant orders did much, not only for theological study
at the universities, but also, apparently, for the training of the
secular clergy in their local theology schools. It was the Domini-
can ideal to have no friary without a lecturer, or quahfied

chantry school. Cf. CPP, i. 25, where in 1343 the living of Houghton was
appropriated by the bishop of Durham for the maintenance of a parish
vicar, resident rector and four chaplains, and four university scholarships.

1 For the best modem study of these, see Eng. Franc. Hist. 158-76.

^ Crise Scol. 42; Coulton, G. G., Mediaeval Studies, x, Simpkin, Marshall
and Co., 1913.

192 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

teacher of theology, and the Franciscans followed in their foot-
steps. Franciscans could not take the degree of B.D. at Paris,
Oxford or Cambridge, unless they had previously lectured at
places reckoned as "studia generalia" in the order; or, in
England, in the friary schools at London, York, Norwich, New-
castle, Stamford, Coventry or Exeter^. The records of the
Mendicant orders render it clear that seculars were allowed to
attend these theology lectures^, intended primarily for the
training of young friars: but Mr Little, in Studies in English
Franciscan History, notices the curious lack of evidence that
individual seculars in England had done so^. In face of this lack
of evidence, the relative extent to which the secular clergy were
educated in cathedral or friary schools can hardly yet be esti-
mated: but there is no evidence that the training given was
essentially different. The friars too lectured and disputed in
Latin on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, with an eye to pastoral
theology: under Grosseteste they "became proficient in doubtful
points of scripture [quaestiones], and subtle moralisations suit-
able for sermons^" : but, as at the universities, they taught their
scholars a theology founded on the Bible, and not the biblical
text itself. There is no direct evidence that the friars, for in-
stance, lectured on the Sunday epistles and gospels before the
days of Wycliffe, with a view to their scholars translating and
expounding the text later in sermons. On the contrary, the
manuals of preaching, composed by the friars^, which were very
popular, commended more novel methods of sermon-making,
likelier to catch the attention of the audience : which renders it
improbable that the friars laid very great stress on the
exposition of Sunday epistles and gospels in their local theology
lectures.

Thus there is on the whole very little indication that any
attention was given to the study of the biblical text by secular
ordinands. Boys learned their letters from the primer, and
possibly, in the days of Wycliffe himself, they construed epistles
and gospels in certain grammar schools : but there is no evidence
that they were otherwise concerned with the text of the Vulgate ;
and for its study by means of translations, — such as that re-

1 Eng. Franc. Hist. 167. ^ Id. 168-73.

3 Id. 170. * Id. 165. ' See p. 148 n.

VII] EXAMINATION ON INSTITUTION 193

commended for young clerks in the Cologne Bible of 1480, — there
is no evidence at all.

§ 2. But, though clerical education was supposed to afford
sufficient training in Latin for parish priests to be able to con-
strue the Latin Vulgate and service books for themselves, there
are many indications that this standard was never universally
reached, and that in many dioceses, at many periods, the gap
between theory and practice was very great. There was no
effectual examination in letters for the priesthood as such,
but the bishop or his official examined candidates for institution
o a benefice, and sometimes examined the holders of benefices
on visitation. The record of these examinations, in the episcopal
registers and elsewhere, shew that the minimum standard was
low, and that it was frequently not reached. The examination
was viva voce, and for a hitherto unbeneficed priest consisted of
"reading, construing, singing and speaking Latin," about 1370;
while the confirmation of beneficed priests as archdeacons,
priors, precentors, etc., at the same date, was generally preceded
only by the examination in Latin^. The passage selected for
examination was generally some portion of the canon of the
mass, which shews that the intention was that priests should
understand what they read, in this most solemn part of their
duties. The council of Oxford in 1222 ordered that priests
should be able, at least, to understand the consecration formula
in Latin; but at the Salisbury visitation of the same year, the
incumbents of five out of the seventeen churches were found
unable to do so-. Dispensations of non-residence were often
given to holders of benefices in order that they might continue
their studies, and in such cases the living was really used to
provide a university scholarship^; but, besides such cases, others
are mentioned where the vicar or rector, or candidate for a
benefice, was found insufficient in the knowledge of grammar or
singing, and was given leave of absence for a stated period in
order that he might "learn to chant," "learn music," or "learn

1 Cf. CPL, IV. 175, 194, 6, 9, 222, 363. 401, 2, 413. 4, 421-5, etc.

* Coulton, G. G., Mediaeval Studies, vii. For references to "enormous
illiteracy" on the part of rectors, see Eng. Franc. Hist. 161, n. i, and Regis-
ter of S. Osmund, Jones, W. H. R., in RS, i. 304-6.

* Cf. introd. by Tout, T. F., to Reg. of John de Halton, CYS, xxxvii. ; and
CPL, IV. 394, 233, 165. 184, 185, 305, 527, 317, etc.

D.W.B. 13

194 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

grammar": that is, pull himself up to examination level. One
rector was thus examined three times during his four years'
study, and finally rejected for his "ignorance of letters^." The
"school" the candidate was to attend in such cases was not
generally specified, but it was probably not the university;
Northampton is mentioned in 1232, and the cathedral school at
Lincoln three times ^. Statistics for the relative frequency of
the ability to read Latin on the part of mediaeval parish priests
cannot be given here : but the evidence quoted is enough to shew
that although the clergy were, in theory, expected to expound
the scriptures to their parishioners, they must frequently have
been unable to translate the Latin text themselves.

The Gemma Ecclesiastica of Giraldus Cambrensis describes in
some detail the state of learning and morals among the clergy
and laity known to its author: the descriptions would apply
mainly to Welshmen, but not solely, since the learned arch-
deacon was so great a traveller. He represents the parish clergy
of about 1180-1200^ as being frequently ilHterate:

We will shew by sundry examples the manner in which parish
priests to-day explain to their parishioners the gospels and holy
scripture. There is the case of the priest who was preaching to the
people a sermon about S. Barnabas, and he said among other things:
"He was a good man and a saint, but he used, however, to be a
robber." For his authority was that verse of the gospel, namely,
"Now Barabbas was a robber," and he did not distinguish properly
between Barnabas and Barabbas. Then there is the case of the priest
who was preaching about the Canaanite woman, and he said she was
partly a woman and partly a dog, because he did not distinguish
between Canaanite and canine. Then, that of the priest who was an-
nouncing the feast of SS. Simon and Jude, and said that: "The one
was a good man and a saint, and the other the man who betrayed
Christ, and we ought not to honour his day for his own sake, but for
that of his companion," confusing S. Jude with Judas*.

He goes on with a string of such stories : those of the priest who
could not translate the word broiled in broiled fish and honey-
comb, and rendered it "donkey fish"; and when he was asked

1 Rot. Hug. de Welles, CYS, Phillimore, W. P. W., xii., xiii., xiv. ; cf . CPL,
V. 260.

2 Rot. Hug. xviii.

' He presented the Gem. Ec. to Innocent III in 1199.
* Gir. Cambren. 11. 341.

VII] SOME ILLITERATE PARISH PRIESTS 195

what a donkey fish was, answered that, just as there was a fish
called a dog fish, so also there was a hare fish, and others like
all the other land beasts, and this particular fish was a donkey
fish, but it was not found in those parts. Then, there was the
priest who thought that altera was a fish, because they let down
the net on the right side of the ship and took it ; and the priest
who gave the same translation for the numerals ^7'g hundred and
fifty in the parable of the two debtors, and on its being remarked
that the lord forgave them both the same amount, added: "but
in one case the coins were Angevin, and in the other, sterling."
There was too the priest who translated sanctus Johannes ante
portam Latinam as, saint John who first brought the Latin language
to England, and finally, the one who asked master John of Corn-
wall who Busillis was? and when master John asked him where,
and in what scripture the name was found, he said, "in the
missal," and ran for his own book, and shewed him in die
written at the foot of one column, and bus illis at the beginning
of another. Master John took advantage of his question to
bring up the point publicly when he lectured on the morrow in
the schools, and to shew how great a scandal was clerical
ignorance^.

The anecdotes of Giraldus may have been partly dictated by
vanity, but they are borne out by the evidence of the registers,
and sometimes by the official language of mediaeval bishops.
The most zealous of these for the equipment of the clergy for
their office of explaining the scriptures were probably Grosse-
teste and Peckham, and their words shew that ability to construe
Latin easily could not be reckoned as general among parish
priests. Grosseteste laid down, as the minimum knowledge
necessary to a priest, only ability to say the ten commandments,
and explain them to his people, with the seven deadly sins : and
to understand "at least simply" the seven sacraments, and the
three creeds^. They must be able to teach the children of their
parishioners the our Father, creed, and hail Mary, and, since
"some adults are ignorant of these things, as we hear," to
examine them in them when they come to confession. He also
stated frequently in ordination sermons that the cause of the

1 Gir. Cambren. 11. 343.

2 Grosseteste, Pegge, S.. London, 1793, 315, in the constitutions.

13—2

196 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

evil condition of the Church was the failure of the clergy to
preach the gospel of Christ^ : the instruction of his flock Was the
first duty of a parish priest, and yet :

To-day there are many pastors, bound to feed their hungry flock with
the Word of God, who have no food to do it with : for there are many
who do not know how to explain to the people a single article of the
faith, or commandment of the decalogue^.

There should be, he concludes, a manual to teach them the
most necessary subjects, and in this desire he anticipated
Peckham, Quivil and Thoresby, who actually supplied such
manuals. Grosseteste's sermon, as quoted by a Lollard, to the
effect that priests ought to translate the Sunday gospel for them-
selves before making their sermon upon it, and that those who
could not so translate it should seek help of their neighbours, is
not known in its Latin form : but is paralleled in tone by many
of his ordination sermons.

Archbishop Peckham, in his constitutions of 1281, dwelt also
on the illiteracy of the clergy, and the evils arising from it :

The ignorance of priests precipitates the people into the pit of error ;
and the folly or boorishness of clerks, who are commanded to instruct
the minds of the faithful in the catholic faith, sometimes increases
error rather than doctrine. ... As a remedy for which peril we com-
mand and enjoin that each parish priest, four times in the year (that
is, once in each quarter of the year), upon one or more holy days
shall himself or by his deputy explain to the people in the vulgar
tongue. . .the fourteen articles of the faith, the ten commandments
of the decalogue, the two precepts of the gospel, the seven works of
mercy, the seven mortal sins, the seven principal virtues, and the
seven sacramental graces. And, lest any man should excuse himself
from the aforesaid things through ignorance, since all the ministers
of the Church are bound to know them, we here give them in a brief
summary^.

The Latin exposition which followed was such as Grosseteste
had desired, and very similar to that issued by bishop Quivil of
Exeter in 1287*. He enjoined that, since ignorance was the

^ Fasc. Rer. Exp. 11. 251, 256, 260.

2 Id. 265.

^ Wilkins, ii. 54. No translation of the catechism was issued at the time,
but archdeacons were ordered to expound it "in the domestic idiom" to
the local clergy, who were to teach it to their parishioners in sermons.

* Id. II. 143, 162,

VII] OFFICIAL TEXT BOOKS FOR THEM 197

mother of all errors and ought above all to be shunned by priests,
whose office consisted in preaching and teaching, each arch-
deacon should inquire which vicars, rectors or priests were
"enormously ilhterate," and report them. "Enormous illite-
racy" was to consist of inabihty to say b}^ heart the command-
ments, seven sins, seven sacraments and creed; and, to improve
the level of clerical education in his diocese, Quivil not merely
issued a tract summarising these matters, as Peckham had done,
but ordered each parish priest to possess and use it, under penalty
of one mark, payable to the archdeacon. Thoresby's similar
tract^, issued, however, both in Latin and in English, has been
mentioned earlier. These tracts, officially issued by archbishops
and bishops, throw a twofold light on the question of the biblical
knowledge of parish priests. They shew first, that translation
or exposition of the Vulgate text was not one of the necessary
duties of the parish priest: and secondly, that the minimum
knowledge required of them was something very much less than
ability to construe the Vulgate text. A tract issued even as late
as 1494, written by a theological lecturer at Cambridge full of
zeal for clerical education and the study of the scriptures, repre-
sents it as not impossible even then that a priest should be un-
able to understand Latin^: and the number of ignorant priests
was much greater in 1300 than 1500. So far, the evidence for
the education of parish priests, and the duties required of them
by the bishops, bears out the Lollards' contention that the text
of the Bible, and even of the New Testament, was largely un-
known to them and their parishioners at the time. The parish-
ioners knew the great events in our Lord's life, as given in the
creeds and expounded thence in the pulpits: but they were not
necessarily familiar, through the ministrations of their parish
priests, with His teaching, miracles and life, as recorded in the
text of the New Testament.

§ 3. When the Waldensian and Lollard heretics complained
that the laity were ignorant of the scriptures, since they could
not read Latin and were not allowed to read translations, the
orthodox answer was always, that it was the duty of the laity
to listen to the scriptures, as expounded verbally by the priest,

^ See p. 141.

* Melton's Sermo Exhortatorius, quoted Gasquet, Eve of Ref. 134.

198 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

in accordance with holy doctors. By this means unlettered men
were to be saved from the dangers of wrongful interpretation,
and strengthened in Christian faith and practice. To some ex-
tent this answer was justified, for nearly all early mediaeval
books of sermons were homilies founded on a text of the Sundaj'
gospel or epistle, and sometimes referring to the contents of the
gospel or epistle as a whole: and such books of homilies were
written throughout the middle ages. This shews that the tradition
of preaching on the Sunday gospel was continuous and wide-
spread: but two circumstances tended to lessen its value as a
teaching institution. The first was the infrequency of sermons
in the early middle ages, and the second was the tendency to
discard the Sunday gospel as a subject in later times. More-
over, it was the one great duty of the priest to teach the faith,
and not to expound the Bible, from the earliest middle ages to
the Reformation; and it was on this that bishops and synods
insisted throughout the period.

The illiterac}^ of Anglo-Saxon priests rendered impossible the
preaching of a compulsory number of sermons in the year. In
1217 bishop Poore, of Salisbury, ordained that each archdeacon
was to instruct the "simple priests^" within his archdeaconry in
simple language on the articles of the faith: they were then to
repeat the exposition to their parishioners "frequently, in the
domestic idiom." Parish priests, that is, were not 3'et bound to

1 Mansi, 22, c. 1103, § 3. "Simple priests " = illiterate. All the priests of
the archdeaconry were, however, to be present : whether the archdeacon was
to make his own exposition in Latin or English is not clear. When sermons
were preached at all, there was generally no difficulty in securing that they
should be in the vernacular except in the case of Wales or Ireland [or in
Slavonic countries]. Giraldus Cambrensis was appointed to preach the
crusade in Wales, and spoke so movingly in French that numbers took the
cross without understanding his words, De Rebus, 75-6. Grosseteste insisted
on the preaching of sermons "in the domestic idiom," and the later popes
took some measures to secure vernacular preaching. In 1366, when the
English held Gascony, the pope wrote to the archbishop of Bordeaux to ask
whether Alexander Dalby, dean of S. John's, Chester, could "so understand
the Welsh tongue as to be able to preach in it": since Edward, prince of
Aquitaine, wished to have him appointed to the see of Bangor; as the arch-
bishop had " many who spoke Welsh in his diocese," he was to send the pope
a private report about it; CPL, iv. 25. An Irish priest was removed from a
vicariate in Connor because "he neither understands nor can intelligibly
speak the language of the parishioners," id. vi. 425, and complaints were
lodged against Robert, bishop of Killaloe, because he was "ignorant of the
scriptures and of the Irish tongue," id. vii. 7.

VIlJ THEIR SERMONS 199

preach every Sunday and holy day, but they were exhorted to
preach "frequently." It was probably an advance in practice
when archbishop Peckham made it compulsory for priests to
preach four times a year at least. Later synods reiterated the
injunction for the necessity of sermons, and increased their fre-
quency: but the subjects for sermons remained the same
throughout Europe from the twelfth century to the Reforma-
tion^. They were thus summarised in the prologue to the Abbey
of the Holy Ghost of c. 1370:

Therefore our father the bishop. . .has treated and ordained, for
the common profit, through the council of his clergy, that each on©
that under him has cure of souls, openly, in English, upon Sundays,
preach and teach them that they have cure of the law and the lore to
know God Almighty, that principally may be shewed in these six
things :

(i) In the fourteen points that fallen to the truth (the creed).

(2) In the ten commandments that God has given us.

(3) In the seven sacraments that are in holy Church.

(4) In the seven works of mercy unto our even-Christians.

(5) In the seven virtues that each man shall use.

(6) In the seven deadly sins that each man shall refuse.

And he bids and commands in all that he may, that all that have cure or
keeping under them, enjoin their parishioners and their subjects, that
they hear and learn these ilk six things, and oftsiths rehearse them, till
they con them, and sithen teach them their children, if they any have,
what time so they are of eld to learn them. And that parsons and
vicars and all parish priests inquire diligently of their subjects in the
Lenten time, when they come to shrift, whether they know and con
these six things: and if it be founden that they con them not, that
they enjoin them upon his behalf, and of pain of penance, for to con
them 2.

There is no evidence at all among English records that the
gospel was ever read in English at the beginning of the sermon
till a year or two before the Reformation. The period when the
practice began in Germany, between 1500 and 1526, can be quite
clearly traced: but there is no evidence for such a practice in
England till the year 1538^. The absence of reference to such a
practice is decisive, because there is so much general evidence

1 See p. 68. 2 eETS, OS, 26, 2.

3 The visitation articles of two dioceses then ordered the gospel to be read
in the pulpit in English each Sunday, but with accompanying clauses
shewing this to be an innovation at the date : see chapter xiv.

200 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

about the sermons of the period and their subject-matter, both
in the decisions of diocesan synods, the books of sermons pre-
pared for the help of the clergy, and the books to instruct them
in the art of preaching. Since none of the three mention any
such practice, the weight of evidence against it would seem
conclusive.

From about 1300, moreover, when sermons were becoming
more frequent, there was a tendency to use other illustrative
matter than the gospel in popular preaching, as well as to use
the saint's day legends for sermons in place of the saint's day
gospels. Both tendencies were part of the growth of popular
preaching, as an art in itself, and as a means of moving the
congregation to devotion or almsgiving, instead of instructing
them in the elements of the faith, or explaining the story of the
gospel quite simply in English. The earlier northern rhymed
gospels consisted first of the translation of the gospels alone:
then of these translations with a moral tale added to each : but
in later forms, generally of the moral tales, or exempla, alone^.
The increase of popular preaching was connected with the work
of the Franciscans, who were expert, not only in the practice of
the art themselves, but in the preparation of books of materials
for sermons, and of manuals on the art of preaching^. In the
thirteenth century Guibert de Nogent wrote a treatise on How
a sermon ought to he made; Alain de Lisle one on the Art of
preaching, and between 1210 and 1228 Jacques de Vitry intro-
duced many exempla into his popular Sermons in the Vulgar
Tongue. The fabliaux were also used as sources for illustration,
both by Odo of Cheriton and Etienne de Besangon in his
Alphabetum Narrationum, c. 1284^. The latter treatise was
arranged in dictionary form, so that the would-be preacher could
easily find a moral anecdote on Abbess: Confessor: Confusion:
and so forth, down to the final one on Zelotipa. These books
of ready made sermons, or materials for sermons, were very
frequent from the thirteenth century onwards, the most popular
of all perhaps being the Gesta Romanorum*. Several of them have

1 See p. 149.

- English popular preaching in the fourteenth century, Toulmin Smith, L.,
EHR. VII. 25.

3 EHR, VII. 27, 28; ed. Banks. M. M , EETS, OS, 126, 1905.
* EETS, ES, 33.

VII] BOOKS ON PREACHING 201

been printed, and a good description of some of them is given
by Mr Little in his Studies in English Franciscan History^. The
stories and sermons deal with the virtues and vices of all classes
of society, monks, priests and seculars: but no single story or
anecdote can be found to advocate the practice of reading the
Bible, either by clerks or lay people, and this is very significant.
In the Alphabetuni Narrationum, for instance, the only tale
which mentions scriptural study is that of the abbot Pambo^,
who, while still unlettered, went to another monk to learn to
read. He was first taught the verse : / said, I will take heed to my
ways: and went away to put in practice what he had learnt.
This took him the remainder of his life, so that he never returned
for a second lesson : the moral of the story being obviously, not
the duty of studying the Bible, but of practising virtue. The
stories themselves are non-biblical, and the great popularity of
these books must have meant a lessening in the biblical character
of the sermons delivered^.

Three features of the preaching of the period are thus clear,
and bear upon the question of the biblical knowledge of clergy
and laity before the days of Wycliffe. First, that the Sunday
sermon was not universal in all parishes before this date, since
fourteenth century synods legislated on this point*, taking
measures to provide that the parish clergy should be able to
preach them. At the end of the century indulgences began to be
granted for attendance at sermons, — though not usually those
of the parish priest, but some other ecclesiastic. In 1371 one
was granted to all who should hear the sermon in the presence
of the duchess of Brittany^, and in 1372 another to those who
heard that of the papal nuncio^. Shortly after, the chancellor of
Lincoln obtained a hoHday from his duties there, on the grounds
that he wished to "reside six weeks in his Kentish parish, and
recreate his parishioners with sermons'." But the Sunday
sermon was still not universal. Secondly, for a hundred years
before WycHffe's day there had been a tendency to compose
sermons from non-biblical rather than bibhcal matter, as the

^ 135-157- ^ EETS. OS, 126, 468.

3 For Wycliffite statements that the friars preached in rhyme, see p. 148.
* For evidence on this point, see G. G. Coulton's Mediaeval Studies, 2nd
ed. 1915, Appendix, 103.

6 CPL, IV. 163. « Id. 171. ' Id. VII. 497.

202 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.

books of sermon materials shew; and thirdly, books on the
manner and matter of preaching never suggest that the preacher
should make a literal translation of the Sunday gospel in the
sermon, or should inculcate the need of Bible reading for the
laity at all. This last omission may seem obvious and inevitable
when all but the privileged classes were devoid of books, and
unable to read: but among the many virtues which different
volumes of sermons inculcate on the devout and well-born laity,
who could have had plenty of books if they had wanted them,
Bible reading is not found.

§ 4. None of the Latin or English manuals composed for the
help of the parish priest suggested that it was his duty to study
the Vulgate, or to translate its contents to his people in his
sermons, or to urge upon them the need of studying it, either by
means of translations or otherwise. The Latin manuals were
more frequently possessed by the higher clergy than by parish
priests: from about 1350 onwards the Oculus Sacerdotis^ of
William de Pagula was a book frequently found in libraries, and
mentioned in wills. It was divided into four parts; each part
was sometimes found separately as the pars prima, secunda,
tertia oculi sacerdotis, while the fourth was entitled the Cilium
oculi sacerdotis, or Priest's Eyelid ; sometimes the different parts
were described as the Pars D extra, or Sinistra Oculi Sacerdotis^.
About 1380 John de Burgh, chancellor of the university of
Cambridge, wrote another manual modelled upon it, and even
longer, called the Pupilla Oculi, perhaps the most popular
of all fifteenth century manuals^. The Ars praedicandi^ of
Alain of Lille, and the Speculum Ecclesiae^ of Hugh of vSt-Cher,
were also fairly frequent in English libraries. None of these
refers to any duty of the parish priest to instruct his parishioners
in the biblical text.

1 Fabricius, iii. 181; Syon, 245; Reg. of Edm. Stafford, 1395-1419,
Hingeston-Randolph, 416, 432; the Cilium was bequeathed in 1349,
London Wills, 1. 607 n. ^ Pembroke MSS. 248, 281; Bury, 83.

3 Fabricius, i. 221; Syon, 191. See Reg. Stafford, 394 and 404, where the
book is twice bequeathed: once to be used by the ministers of the church
of Exeter for their learning. It was bequeathed to the parish church of
Swine by Peter the vicar, about 1400, together with the Speculum Cura-
torum, see chapter xiv. Leicester abbey had it in 1492 (Nicholls' Leicester,
I. app. 106) ; so Bury, 85, and Parker Coll. 43.

* EHR vn. 27. 6 Ff. i_ „ §g

Vll] THE BOOKS OF PARISH PRIESTS 203

§ 5. The references to the books owned by particular parish
priests, or to their love of biblical study, are ver}' scanty. There
is no record of one who owned either an English or French Bible
before Wycliffe's day, and the earliest reference to a parish priest
who owned a Vulgate is to Hamo, rector of Snaves, who gave
one to the abbey of S. Augustine's, Canterbury, about 1300,
probably at his death^. In 1384 the parson of Snettisham,
Stephen Edrich, possessed one^; and about 1410 Robert Stone-
ham, vicar of Oakham, bequeathed one^; there are five other
cases of rectors or chaplains before 1450, excluding the cathedral
and higher clergy*. The wills of parish priests before Wycliffe's
death are relatively few, because it was not till about 1400 that
persons with relatively little to leave made wills at all; neverthe-
less, it is noticeable that the only books known to have been
bequeathed were service books (except the single above-men-
tioned Vulgate), and also that no English or French psalters or
books of devotion are known to have been bequeathed. This
emphasises the dependence of the parochial clergy on the gospel
for the day, and their own powers of admonition, for the matter
of their sermons; and it explains something of the difficulty of
synods in enforcing the regular preaching of sermons at all. It
agrees with the state of things indicated in Grosseteste's sermon,
where he recommended those who said they could not preach,
to learn the story of the Sunday gospel the week before, and tell
it to the people on Sunday, going if necessary to some neighbour
to have the Latin gospel translated for them^. In face of this
absence of books, it is not surprising that there are no records
of parish priests who devoted themselves especially to the study
of the scriptures, as there are in the case of monks and of the
higher clergy. The parochial clergy were not an order, and no
doubt largely for that reason their work was often unrecorded :
but the absence of any single mention fits in with the evidence
as to their general lack of all except service books. There is no

^ Canterbury, lix.

* Lambeth MSS., James, M. R., 20.
^ Early Line. Wills, 139.

* In 1413, rector of S. Andrew Huberd, Eastcheap, Trans. Bibliog. Soc.
VII. 114; 1423, r. of Rudby, TE, i. 405; 1417, r. of Waldegrave, Early Line.
Wills, 125; 1432, a chaplain of York, TE, II. 29; 1446, c. of York, irf. 11. 117.

^ See p. 141.

204 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLICAL STUDY BY CLERKS [CH.VII

evidence that any of the early Anglo-French or Middle-English
translators were merely parish priests, although translation from
the French was more within their reach than that from the
Latin. The Ayenbite^oJ Inwyt was translated from the French
by a Canterbury monk in 1340^; it is unknown what position
was held by William of Waddington, who was responsible for
the Manuel des Pechiez in its French form ; but Robert Manning
of Bourne, who translated it as the Handlyng Synne in 1303, was
a Gilbertine canon of the order of Sempringham^. William of
Nassington, who translated the Speculum Vitae into English
verse, and perhaps also the Prick of Conscience, was advocate
of the court of York^; Gaytrik was a monk of S. Mary's, York*,
and Walter Hilton was an Austin canon. Richard RoUe was a
hermit, as was a certain translator of a sermon of S. Bernard's
from French into English^; Mirk, an Austin canon of Lilleshall.
Only William of Shoreham, the Kentish author of poems on the
sacraments, the commandments and the creed, was possibly a
parish priest^. The evidence as to their education, their books,
and their literary work is all against their possessing enough
learning before the days of Wycliffe to do much in the way of
expounding the Bible to the laity. However hard working and
zealous a class they might have been, their proper work was
always regarded as the administration of the sacraments, the
teaching of the elements of the faith, and the exhortation to
lives of virtue ; it did not include the personal study of the Bible,
or much preaching on the biblical text to their parishioners.

1 Wells, 345. 2 7^ 3^2.

3 Id. 348, 463. * Id. 355-.

5 Dd. I. I.

^ Wells, 349. The poems are dated by some authorities as between 1375-
1400: but may be the work of a William of Shoreham, who was vicar of
Chart in Kent c. 1320.

CHAPTER VIII

Pre-Wycliffite Bible reading by lay people

§ I. Sir Thomas More would probably have been surprised
to learn that, until the days of Wycliffe hirnself, the language of
those lay people who were sufficiently wealthy to own Bibles
was French; or that, though they were bi-lingual, English was
the language in which they addressed their inferiors, and French
the tongue of civil conversation. Edward I swore in English, but
he addressed his parliament in French. The upper classes in the
time of Grosseteste^ and the de Montforts were still French
speaking, but they were beginning to find Enghsh their native
tongue, and French an acquired one. A French trouvere, writing
about 1250, told how a young French squire was received into
the earl of Oxford's family to teach his daughter French, which
she spoke "not quite so well as if she had been born in Pon-
toise^." French continued to be the language of Parhament and
the law courts for a Httle longer; but in 1362, 1363, and 1364 the
lord chancellor first opened parhament by Enghsh speeches. In
1362 a statute ordered all pleading at the law courts to be con-
3iicted in English instead of French, though the year books
continued to be written in French-''. Wills continued to be written
in French or Latin for some time longer : the first English sentence
in the collection of London Wills occurs in a will dated 1405^
and directs that a chantry priest should ask for prayers for the
founder in Enghsh. The grammar schools had already ceased
to construe the Latin texts in French, and used English instead;
and in 1404 two English ambassadors went so far as to de'clare to
the French ones that they were completely ignorant of that lan-
guage,— but this may have been due to diplomatic amour-propre^.

1 For his French Chasteau d' Amour see EETS, OS, 71, xxxiii.

2 Blonde of Oxford, Camden Soc. 1868, vii. » CHEL, 11. 70

* I. 371. Vows of chastity were taken in French for some time longer:
the first English one in the Ely register is in 1407. See EDR, Arundel, New
Series, 116-39, 153; for 1896, 30; for 1900, 54; for 1901, 58.

* De Ryssheton and Swynford, Royal and Hist. Letters, ed. Hingeston,
F. C, I. Ixxvii, Ixxxvii, 307; cf.i. Ixvii. Knowledge of French had so much
died out by 1432, that Oxford regularised the teaching of it ; cf. Univs. 11. 460.

206 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLE READING BY LAITY [CH.

Thus, till the period of Wycliffe's own influence, and even
later, lay people of the upper classes who used translations of
the scriptures, or books of devotion, would naturally have had
them in French. The last quarter of the fourteenth century saw
the beginnings of a revival of vernacular literature all over
Europe, and Wycliffe's followers were able to obtain the
support they did in favour of biblical translations, because of
the coincidence of their championship with this pro-vernacular
wave. Had Wycliffe lived a hundred years earlier, his followers
would have tried to circulate not English, but French Bibles,
; among the dukes and knights. No English translation was made
I before Wycliffe's time, not only because Bible reading was not
' advocated for lay people, but because the most frequent trans-

Ilators, the chaplains to noble families, would have prepared
French translations, had they prepared any.

§ 2. The great majority of lay people were, of course, illite-
rate, and unable to read or write. This is sometimes obscured
by mediaeval writers who deal with social life, and who speak
of those of a single class as if that class alone existed. Thus
writers like the Knight of the Tower, and those who compiled
books of courtesy or manners, speak of the duties of women,
or of young boys, when they actually mean only well born
women, and the sons of nobles^. Thus most of the evidence as
to the education of lay people, or their power of reading in after
life, applies only to the upper social classes, a very small section
of the whole population. There was, in the middle ages, a career
open to talent : and those of lowly birth, like Grosseteste, some-
times rose to great positions: but the career lay through the
Church, since the student must at least be in minor orders.
Those of the lower classes who gained an education did not re-
main lay people: and those who became really proficient in
Latin seldom remained merely tonsured clerks, without pro-
ceeding to the priesthood. The majority of lay people were small
farmers, farm labourers, personal servants, members of great
households, soldiers, and the handicraftsmen of the town:. some,
but not most of them, might go to a small local abc school as
children, but they had no further acquaintance with books.

^ Cf. the manuals mentioned, pp. 21-2.

VIII] UPPER CLASS CHILDREN 207

There is almost no evidence that little girls attended the ahc
schools at all, though it is possible that in some cases they did
do so^. Book-learning was no concern of most English people,
before the fifteenth century, at any rate.

There is, however, enough evidence as to how the children of
the upper classes were educated, to render it certain that
biblical translations played no part in it, either in the case of
boys or girls. Noblemen's children were usually sent to some
great household to be educated as pages and squires. They were
sometimes sent to abbots' or bishops' households, as to those
of any other magnate; and the daughters of knights and nobles
were sometimes sent to board in a convent, and to be taught
letters by one of the nuns. In the fifteenth century treatises
were written on the education and training of young pages ; and
this training, although less elaborate, was probably much the
same in earlier centuries. The young page was to learn to take
part in the stately routine of the life of a great household, and
the knightly exercises of the day: but almost nothing is said
about his literary education, certainly nothing of biblical study.
Chaucer's young squire, who might have been a contemporary
of Wycliffe, was a model of knightly virtues and accomplish-
ments: he could write well, and make songs, and "well portray,"
or paint on vellum.

The Book of the Knight of the Tower dealt expressly with the
bringing up of noblemen's daughters, and was accompanied by
a companion volume for his sons, which has not survived. The
knight of "La Tour-Landry" was a Frenchman of Anjou, who
was present at the siege of Calais in 1346, fought against the
EngHsh in the ensuing wars, and died rather later than Wycliffe :
his book was written about 1371^. But though it was written
by a Frenchman, the life of well born English ladies at the time
was much the same as that of his own daughters, and the book
was soon translated into English^. The knight says in his preface

^ In England : for the Paris schools for girls, taught by mistresses of
grammar, see Jourdain, 127-9. Cf. Hentsch, 62, for the advice given in the
Ancren Riwle, not to "turn your cloister into a school": the authoress's
servant might however teach any little girl in danger of being taught along
with boys.

2 La Tour-Landry, vii.

^ Id. I. XIV.

208 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLE READING BY LAITY [CH.

that he means to compile, with the aid of two priests and two
clerks, a book of instructions for his daughters, and to collect
stories as examples of his admonitions. These stories are drawn
from the Bible, the lives of saints, and the fabliaux; the biblical
instances, the knight says, have been supplied by the two
priests and two clerks. The knight has liberal opinions about the
education of his daughters: maidens, he says, should be put to
school, to learn virtuous things out of the scriptures^, like Saint
Katharine, who by her wit and clergy, with the grace of the
Holy Ghost, surmounted and overcame the greatest philo-
sophers of Greece.

And therefore it is a good example to put young children unto school,
and to make them books of wisdom and of science, and books of
virtues and profitable examples, whereby they may see the savement
of the soul and of the body, by the example of good living of the holy
fathers before us : and not for to study in the books that speak of love,
fables, and of other worldly vanities. . . .Howbeit, there be such men,
that have opinion that they would not that their wives, nor their
daughters, should know no thing of the scripture. As touching unto
the holy scripture, it is no force though women meddle not nor know
but little thereof: but for to read, every woman it is the better that
can read and have knowledge of the law of God, and for to have been
learned to have virtue and science, to withstand the perils of the
soul 2.

But, though the knight is thus anxious that well born ladies
should learn to read, and goes into great detail about the virtues
and practices that should find a place in their daily life, it does
not occur to him that the)^ should have a Bible or read it. They
should, he says, say their mattins immediately on waking^, and
hear as many masses as they may, fasting the while*; unmarried
maidens should fast three days a week, Fridays if possible on
bread and water, and Saturdays and Wednesdays at least eating
"no thing that hath received death." They should say their
prayers with attention, not twisting their necks round like
cranes or tortoises^, never be late for mass, visit and feed the

1 La Tour-Landry , 117: the knight uses "holy scriptures" and "holy
writ" in the broader mediaeval sense: e.g. "holy writ saith, 'better were
a short orison, said with good devout heart, than great long mattins, said
without devotion,'" 7, etc.

2 Id. 118. 3 ja, 7.

* Id. 8-13, 47. * Jd. 15. I

VIII] GRAMMAR SCHOOLS 209

poor, and practise other pious customs. All these points the
knight illustrates at great length with many "examples" or
stories : so that it is fair to imagine that, if personal reading of
the Bible or gospels had been among the practices of virtuous
ladies of the day, he would not have omitted to exhort them to
that also. Actually, however, he says nothing of the kind, but
insists only on their saying their "mattins" or offices.

Boj^s who were not sent to some nobleman's house for training,
and who nevertheless obtained some sort of education beyond
that of the abc school, may, after the beginning of the fourteenth
century, have attended a grammar school. In the early days of
these, probably the great majority of the boys who attended
them became clerks or priests in later life: and there is not much
evidence to the contrary before the days of Wycliffe. Just about
his time, and in the time of William of Wykeham who outlived
him by twenty years, some of the grammar schools were begin-
ning to be used for the sons of the landed gentry who were not
going to become clerks: that is, they were beginning to assume
the likeness of the great public schools, instead of training
schools for the clergy. The papal and episcopal registers begin
about 1390 to speak of a new class of scholar, "literate laymen" :
references to them are fairly frequent between 1390 and 1415,
which seems to have been the period when the combination of
literacy and laity was new. The description is not used earlier,
and drops out later, probably because "literate laymen" were
more frequent^. If a small number of grammar school boys did
remain laymen before Wycliffe's day, they were the sons of the
landed gentry: and there is no evidence that any grammar
school provided biblical teaching.

Well born lay people who could read were thus almost as
dependent as the illiterate upon services, plays, and the coloured
windows and carvings of churches, for their actual knowledge of
the Bible. Sermons dealt mainly with elementary Christian
dogma, and with the virtues and vices: but the miracle plays
sometimes represented biblical scenes chosen from the whole of
the Old and New Testaments. The Chester plays included
twenty-four dramas or incidents, each to be acted by a separate

^ Cf. CPL, IV. 360, 361, 488; V, 247. There are also references to literate
laymen in 14 14 in DH, Sodor and Man, 82, and DH, Hereford, 127, 129.

D.w.B. 14

210 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLE READING BY LAITY [CH.

craft-gild: the first was that of the fall of Lucifer; the second the
creation and fall; the third, the flood; the fourth, Abraham and
Melchisedek; the fifth, Moses, Balak and Balaam; the sixth, the
salutation and nativity. The series continued with the events
of our Lord's hfe, and ended with the Ascension, scenes from
Ezekiel's prophecy. Antichrist, and Doomsday. It must have
been some such series as this that Henry IV watched for four
whole days at Clerkenwell, with his wife and son^. The plays
were not solely biblical; for the Harrowing of Hell, the story of
the midwives at the Nativity, etc., were often introduced, with
other apocryphal incidents. The verse banns of the Chester
plays 2, probably written in the sixteenth century, warned the
audience that all the events were not biblical: the monk who
composed the plays:

In pagentes set fourth apparently to all eyne

the old and newe testament with liuelye comforth,

Interminglinge therewith onely, to make sporte,

some thinge, not warranted by any writt,

which to gladd the hearers, he woulde men to take yt'.

the beirthe of Christe shall all see in that stage.

yf the scriptures a-warrant not of the mydwyfes reporte,

the Authour telleth his Authour, then take it in sporte*!

As our beleeffe is that Christe after his passion

descended into hell, but what he did in that place,

though our Authour sett after his opinion,

yet creditt you the best learned, — those he doth not disgrace,

we wishe that of all sortes the beste you ymbrace —

you Cookes, with your Carriage see that you do well

in pagente sett out the harrowinge of hell^.

Besides the apocryphal incidents, the biblical characters tended
to be approximated to their representatives of the day: Annas

^ Capes, 373. ^ See chapter xiii.

^ Chester Plays, pt i. 2. The banns are found in this form only in a MS.
dated 1600, but some form may have been written in the fifteenth century:
perhaps in 1447, when the plays were solemnly performed in Chester, id. i.
These verses, if written about 1600, are curious as describing the author as
a monk, "moonkelike in Scriptures well scene," or saying of him "For at
this daye and ever he deserveth the fame which all monkes deserve, pro-
fessinge that name."

* Id. 5. 5 jd, 7.

VIII] MIRACLE PLAYS 211

and Caiaphas appeared as mediaeval bishops, Jezebel persecuted
"bishops of holy Church," and Pilate and Herod talked French
to indicate their rank. The plays were written in verse, and
were merely poems dealing with biblical incidents, not, in any
sense, translations : but the origin of the Chester plays seems to
shew that they were regarded with some suspicion, as popular
English versions of the scriptures. They are described by the
manuscript as "The Whitsun playes first made by one Don
Randle Heggenet, o Monke of Chester Abbey, who was thrise at
Rome, before he could obtaine leave of the Pope to haue them
in the English tongue^." When the license was obtained, the
plays were held in 1327 and 1328 2; and by about 1350 they
must have been regarded by the Church as a useful means of
instruction, for another monk of Chester then obtained an
indulgence of 1000 days from the pope, and 40 from the bishop,
for all who should attend them 3. The banns shew some reason
to think that the plays were intermitted after the prohibition
of English translations of the Bible in 1408, but revived again
in 1447*.

§ 3. If the Church had encouraged the laity, or such of them
as were wealthy enough to possess books, to read the Bible or the "^
gospels in the period before Wycliffe's death, some traces of this
must have survived in the manuals composed for their instruc-
tion and the conduct of their life. Those who could have posses-
sed the manuals themselves could have afforded to possess also
copies of the gospels, or the Sunday gospels and epistles ; so that
advice to study such books, in Latin or in translation, could have
been given if desirable. The manuals themselves, though ad-
dressed to lay people in general, were generally written for the
upper classes, and assumed that the reader belonged to them:
it would therefore have been natural for the writers to advise
study of the Bible, or parts of it, if such had been the practice
of the day. The earliest instance of a religious who gave such
advice, Otto of Passau, in his Four and twenty Elders, might have
been paralleled in England.

Actually, however, no exact parallel exists: Otto himself did

^ Chester Plays, i. 2 /^_ 2 n.

^ Id. I n. Dom. Henry Francis obtained the indulgence from Clement VI,
between 1342-52. * See chapter xiii.

14—2

212 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLE READING BY LAITY [CH.

not write till the year of Wycliffe's death, and his teaching was
the result of a special movement, which had no counterpart in
England. But, though the manuals used in England offer no
instances of the encouragement of Bible reading by the laity in
general, they throw some light on questions connected with it.

The Lay Folks Mass-Book, in its earliest form, was about the
earliest of these manuals. It was originally composed by a
\|' Frenchman, Jeremias, archdeacon of Rouen, about 1150^, for
the benefit of some Norman baron, probably the owner of a
private chapel. The book may have been used in its French
form in England, since French would have been the natural
language for such a book down till about 1350: Jeremias, more-
over, passed some time in England^. His book, like Robert of
Greatham's gospels, was translated into northern English; in
this case, about 1300: fifty years later, it was recopied by a
south-country scribe^. It did not give a translation of the mass
prayers, but instructed the lay person in verse couplets how to
behave, and use his own prayers, throughout, as weU as ex-
plaining to him the different parts of the service*. The pater
noster was not translated:

It were no need thee this to ken,
For who con not this are lewid men^ ;

but the creed was explained in rhyme. The manual shews clearly
that the gospel was read only in Latin, and that the layman,
though not understanding it, was taught to hear it with the
greatest reverence:

Both the readers and the hearers
Have mickle need methinks of lerers,
How they should read and they should hear
The words of God so leve and dear:

1 Lay Folks MB, xi., xxxii. " Id. xl. a Wells, 355.

* We possess only the M.E., not the Norman form, of the manual: but
the direction to the reader to answer, Sed libera nos a malo, at the end of the
pater noster is a trace of the responses still made by the laity in Jeremias'
day in the use of Rouen : see Lay Folks MB, 46, and for other traces of the
Rouen use, xxxii., lxii. The only English used at the mass was that of the
bidding prayers, id. 62. For a priest who used a Welsh ejaculation at mass,
see Gem. Ec. 33.

» Lay Folks MB, 46.

VIII] MANUALS FOR LAY PEOPLE 213

Men ought to have full mickle dread
When they should hear, or else it read

But since our matter is of hearing,
Thereof now shall be our lering^.

Therefore the gospel should be heard standing, and the sign of
the cross should be made at the beginning and end. This book
was in use from about 1150 to 1300 in its French form, and down
till 1450 2 in English : but none of the manuscripts shew the least
trace of any custom of translating the gospel at mass, either after
reading it in Latin, or at the beginning of the sermon 3. Another
verse manual for the laity at mass, the Merita Missae, makes
the point even clearer: the laity are to stand out of reverence,
and they will receive grace by simply hearing the gospel,
without understanding it; just as an adder is affected by the
charm pronounced over her, though she does not understand

the words. ^t the gospel were full good
Steadfastliche that ye stood,
For no thing that ye stirred it.

Though ye understand it nought.

Ye well may wit that God it wrought.

And therefore wisdom were it.
For worship all God's works.
To lewid men that been none clerkes :

This lesson, now go lere it.

And why ye should this lesson lere,
Hearkneth all and ye may hear :

There an adder hauntes,
Ye well may find, and ye will seek,
She understands nothing thy speech.

When thou her endauntes:

1 Id. 16, 17. Another MS., written for the useof the Cistercians at Rivaulx,
alters this passage to make it useful both to those monks who could read,
and those who could not.

If thou of letter kan,

To the priest hearken then

His office, prayer, and pistle:

And answer thereto with good will,

Or on a book thyself it read. . . .

If thou can nought read ne say.

Thy pater noster rehearse alway.

2 Wells, 355.

' Cf. Lay Folks MB, xix. 17, 196, for the old Galilean liturgy, suppressed
by Charlemagne, where the responses had been made by the laity in Gallic ;
and for the reading of the epistle in Old French after the Latin.

214 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLE READING BY LAITY [CH.

Nevertheless, she wots full well
What is thy meaning every deal,

When that thou her enchauntes.
So fareth there understanding fails,
The very virtue you all avails.

Through grace that God you grantes^.

Neither the Handlyng Synne^ nor the Ayenhite of Inwyt refer
to neghgence in reading the Bible as a sin, though each was a
collection of warnings against every variety of sin likely to befall
a mediaeval layman or clerk. The Anglo-Norman form of the
first was in use before 1300^, and the English after 1303. The
Ayenhite of Inwyt^ was in Kentish prose, translated by a Bene-
dictine from a French original. It contained no illustrative
stories, but teaching on the subjects which all mediaeval councils,
and all mediaeval teachers, considered necessary for the instruc-
tion of lay people: the commandments, the creed, the pater
noster, and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. A midland version
of it, the Book of Vices and Virtues, appeared about 1400, and is
often mentioned in the wills of lay people. This type of book,
more than any other, represents the advice of the mediaeval
Church to lay people: and the omission of all reference in it to
scripture reading is significant. There was no further need to
search for further confirmation of the faith in the scriptures,
since this type of book had extracted from them the dogma
necessary for leading a good life; while the dearness of books
and the absence of education made it practically impossible that
most lay people should go beyond these manuals.

The Prick of Conscience was a very long and very popular
poem, perhaps composed from a Latin original of Grosseteste's,
but well enough known by 1350 for manuscripts of it to be
found in both northern and southern dialects 5. The author
explained in his prologue that he intended his work for those
who walked in the darkness of ignorance, but he did not mention
the Bible as a guide for them: the motto of the book is the

^ Lay Folks MB, 140, 361, 379 n.; Wells, 356. The poem was probably
written c. 1400, and used later.

2 Wells, 342, 345.

3 The Manuel des Pechiez.

* Canterbury, lxxxiv. 371, no. 1507, lxxvi.-lxxvii.; 371, no. 1536.
5 Wells, 447.

VIIl] THE PRICK OF CONSCIENCE 215

philosopher's "know thyself," and the book itself was written
in order that men should have guidance, and know:

And which way they should choose and take,
And which way they should leave and forsake^.

He that right order of living will look.
Should begin thus, as says the book.
To know first what himself is.

• • • • • •

There this book is into English drawn,
Of sundry matter, that are unknown
To simple men that are unlearned.
That can no Latin understand.
To make them themselves first know.
And from sin and vanities them draw.

The author then states what things he considers it advisable for
the ignorant to know, treating of each in one part of his book :
the wretchedness of man's estate, the unstableness of the world,
death, purgatory, judgment, hell, and heaven. He sometimes
runs through a list of venial sins: but omission to read the
gospels, etc., is not among them 2, any more than it is in the
searching list suggested to lay people by Rolle in his Form of
Perfect Living^. WilUam Nassington*, advocate at York, also
concerned himself with the instruction of lay people at the end
of this period, writing about 1375. He translated the Latin
Speculum Vitae of John Waldby into short English couplets, and
dealt with the usual points of instruction of the laity : the pater
noster, gifts of the Holy Ghost, seven sins, seven virtues, etc. :
there is nothing about Bible reading. He also turned into verse
the first part of Rolle's beautiful Form of Perfect Living: but
neither in paraphrase or original is there any mention of the
subject. It is a sign of the suspicion which all theological books
in the vernacular aroused about the time of WycUffe's condemna-
tion and after, that a copy of Nassington's Speculum was in 1384
formally presented to the chancellor of Cambridge by the
stationers, with whom it had been left by a certain priest to be
bound.

1 Pricke of Conscience, Morris, R.. EETS, 1863, 6, 10.

- Id. 10, 94. ' Horstmann, i, 21-5.

* Wells, 463.

2l6 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLE READING BY LAITY [CH.

It was examined for defects and heresies, lest the less literate of the
people should by it be negligently deceived and led into error: for
four days it was with all zeal and diligence examined and approved
in every college around. ... If it had not been orthodox, it would have
been bumt^.

Nassington explained in the preface that the work was for the
benefit of the ignorant :

Some can French and no Latin,

That have used courts, and dwelled therein :

And some can of Latin a party,

That can French full febelly:

And some understandeth English

That neither can Latin nor French :

But lerid and lewid, old and young

All understanden English tongue^.

Another translation from the Latin, — this time into prose, not
verse, was made sometime before 1370, and became very popular
later: the Speculum Peccatoris^. The translation is free and
shortened; but, as in the other manuals, there is no advice
about biblical study, or biblical translations. A less common
prose manual, constructed on the usual method of expounding
the creed, the seven deadly sins, penance, pater noster, ave,
creed, etc., was the Memoriale Credentium*, and it has a similar
preface, explaining its composition in English:

Men and women that is in will for to flee sin and lead clean life,
take heed to this treatise that is written in English tongue for lewid
men that nought can understand Latin ne French, and is drawen out
of holy writ, and of holy doctors before this time.

It would have been possible for the writer to recommend the
study of English gospels had they existed, — but the tract is
silent, like all the others of the date.

Nearly all these manuals of the pre-Wycliffite period, unless
they adhered closely to the structure of some tenth or eleventh
century Latin tract, were thus constructed on the same plan,
and shew quite clearly what was considered the official teaching

1 Wells, I. 36, p. 366. 2 Ff 4 g.

* Wells, 458. As with all these translations, the MSS. sometimes have
the title in Latin, sometimes translate it. For the original Latin, attributed
to various patristic authors by mediaeval scribes, see PL, 40, vi. appendix,
coll. 935-9 1 • * See pp. 141, 199.

viii] Hilton's epistle 217

for the laity. This took the form of a skeleton of theology and
the moral virtues and vices, and certainly did not inculcate a
personal appeal to the literary sources on which the system of
theology and ethics was founded. These manuals all dealt with
the same points which Peckham, Quivil and Thoresby had in-
cluded in their official manuals, and which the laity were sup-
posed to know by heart, — the creed, commandments. Lord's
prayer, hail Mary, seven sacraments, etc. So general was the
acceptance of this primary scheme of instruction for lay people,
that when the Lollards tried to issue their own books of instruc-
tion, they made use of exactly the same plan. Thus neither
original didactic treatises, nor official summaries, nor unofficial
expansions of the summaries, — some of them very detailed, —
contain any reference to a possible acquaintance with the text
of the Bible or gospels, either in the lists of virtues and vices, or
in the summaries of sins of omission and commission grouped
under the commandments.

Nearly all these earlier manuals, both official and unofficial,
were translations or paraphrases from the Latin, but at the very
end of the period, during Wycliffe's own life-time, some original
Enghsh works appeared. Two of these, both written for lay
people, are of interest for the question of Bible reading, the
anonymous Abbey of the Holy Ghost^, and Walter Hilton's
Epistle on Mixed Life^, both dating from about 1370-80. Both
are addressed to those who desire to live a life of special devotion
while remaining in the world, and one has and one has not,
advice to read the gospels, the difference being due to the
spiritual outlook of the writer of the treatises. The Abbey of the
Holy Ghost breathes the normal spirit of mediaeval piety ; it was
» written for those prevented by some obstacle from entering a
rehgious order, and advises them how they may lead a life of
equal piety in the world. Their abbey shall be the abbey of the
Holy Ghost, charity shall be its abbess, obedience the walls, and
the other monastic virtues the site, pillars and rulers of the
abbey. The form of the manual is thus quite original, but the

1 Wells, 368; EETS, OS, 26, ir8.

2 Wells, 461. Perry, G. G., printed the tract from the Thornton MS. in
EETS, OS, 20, 1886, as De Vita Activaet Contemplativa; Horstmann, i. 264-
92, prints both the Vernon and Thornton texts.

2l8 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLE READING BY LAITY [CH.

pious practices prescribed are not : there is no mention of Bible
reading among them.

The Epistle on Mixed Life, on the other hand, was the work
of the greatest contemporary Enghsh mystic, whose Scale of
Perfection was the favourite Enghsh mystical work among re-
ligious of the fifteenth century. The Epistle was the first English
manual to recommend, almost indirectly, the reading of the
gospels to lay people, and it is a curious parallel to the case in
Germany, where the same causes produced the same effect. The
Epistle, though not so common as the Scale, is still found in
many manuscripts; it was written, according to the earliest, to
"a worldly lord, to teach him how he should have him in his
state in ordained love to God and to his evenchristians^," and
it laid great emphasis on the extent to which prayer and con-
templation could be practised in a worldly life. The book is the
nearest English equivalent to the treatises of the contemporary
Gottesfreunde, which were written b}' mystical teachers for the
benefit of disciples still living in the world^. Hilton's tract ex-
plained first the nature of the active, contemplative, and
"medled" or "mingled" Christian lives, — the "medled" being
that which sought to cultivate prayer beyond the extent to
which it was practised by all good active Christians.

And soothly, as me thinketh, this medled life accordeth most to
thee. For sith our Lord hath ordained thee and set thee in the state
of sovereignty over other men as much as it is, and lent thee abund-
ance of worldly goods for to rule and sustain specially all those that
are under thy governance, . . . and also therewithal after, thou hast
received grace of the mercy of our Lord for to have somewhat know-
ing of thyself, and ghostly desire and savour of his love : I hope that
this life that is medled is best and most according to thee to travail
in 2.

Later in the treatise Hilton, like the Gottesfreunde^, proceeded
to recommend the reading of the gospels as a preliminary to

^ Horstmann, i. 264. The Vernon MS. throughout treats the tract as
addressed to a single lord: later MSS. begin: "Brethren and sisters, bodily
and ghostly," as in EETS, OS, 20, 19. The whole Epistle is often found in
the MSS. in connexion with the Pore Caitiff, under the name, Of active and
contemplative life; as in MSS. Ff. 6. 36, Rawlinson C. 69, Ashmole 1286,
Douce 288, Bodl. 1843. ^ Horstmann, i. 271.

^ Mr G. G. Coulton suggests that English mystics were actually influenced
by the German mystics of the Rhine, see Christ, S. Francis and To-Day,
p. 172; and Mr Summers in Our Lollard Ancestors, 71, suggests that

VIII] HILTON AND OTTO OF PASSAU 219

meditation, and to kindle in the soul the fire of love through
which it should proceed to higher acts of prayer. He recom-
mended the reading of the Latin gospels, either because no
English translations existed, or because his pupil could, as a
matter of fact, read Latin. The recommendation is rather vague,
but almost certainly refers to the reading of the Gospels.

"A man that is lettered," he writes, "and has understanding in
holy writ, if he have this fire of devotion in his heart, it is good to him
forte gather him sticks of holy ensamples, and sayings of our Lord,
by readings of holy writ, and nourish the fire (of love) with them.
Another man unlettered may nought so readily have at his hand holy
writ and doctor's saws, and forthi it needeth to him to do many good
deeds outward to his evenchristians, and kindle the fire of love with
themi."

Otto of Passau, the German Gottesfreund, actually advised
the reading of the Bible in the mother tongue, and it would be
interesting to know exactly why Hilton did not do so, though
he was the first English religious to recommend the laity to
read the Bible at all. If we knew exactly when the Epistle on
Mixed Life was written, more light would be thrown on the
question. Hilton died in 1395 : and the oldest existent manu-
script of the Epistle seems to date from between 1370 and 1380 2,
so that probably the simple reason why translations are not
mentioned is because none were in existence, since the Wyclifhte
were certainly not circulated before 1384. In any case, the lords
and ladies who came to Hilton for advice were probably of higher
social class than the penitents of the Gottesfreunde, since Hilton
speaks of some of them as being "lettered" or "literate," i.e.
able to read Latin. This is the only mention of Bible reading

about 1424-30 the Norfolk Lollards had as leaders three travelling foreign
priests. I hope to print shortly some notes on the possible connexion of
English and continental mysticism: but at present I believe English four-
teenth century mysticism to be an independent offshoot of Latin mysticism
(like German mysticism itself). Later, there was undoubtedly some inter-
connexion. Similarly, it would appear that Hilton's advice to study the
gospels was an independent result of the same cause as Otto of Passau's
advice to read biblical translations: desire to rise to what mystical writers
called the "prayer of the affections" through a fresh and vivid realisation
of the events of our Lord's life. The point in both cases is, that Bible study
was not, at the date, one of the practices normally recommended to the
devout, as all the other manuals shew positively : but only in the case of those
aspiring to use certain kinds of prayer.

^ Horstmann, i. 278. ^ Wells, 461.

220 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLE READING BY LAITY [CH.

in the Epistle: but the passage is of great interest as shewing
that the reasons which led the German mystics to recommend
bibUcal translations for the use of the orthodox laity were
tending to produce the same result in England. The nearness of
the date^ of the Epistle to the circulation of the Wychffite trans-
lations is of interest, as shewing either that Hilton knew of no
translations of the gospels, or that he disapproved of translations
in general. In any case, he had not behind him, like Otto of
Passau, the Gottesfreunde tradition in favour of scriptural trans-
lations. Hilton's Epistle is finally interesting as the conclusion
of the series of pre-Wyclifhte manuals for lay people. Whereas
none of the earlier manuals suggest Bible or gospel reading for
the laity in any shape or form, his does implicitly recommend
the reading of the Latin gospels to those who could. But his
work was written within a year or two of Wycliffe's death, and
was that of a teacher of mystical prayer ; not, like all the earlier
works, an instruction for good catholic folk in general, who
desired to lead lives of merely ordinary activity and devotion.
§ 4. Judging by wills, and the ownership of surviving manu-
scripts, very few of the laity possessed books of their own at all,
before Wycliffe's day, except a few princes, great nobles, and
noble ladies. The number of lay people who bequeathed books
was very small compared with that of priests, because the latter
possessed breviaries, and sometimes other service books. This
is shewn clearly in the two largest printed collections of wills,
those of London and York. The London wills are mainly those
of lay people, merchants and others, and only roughly one will
in a hundred bequeathed a book at all. The York wills are those
of northern nobles and squires, with a very large proportion of
cathedral dignitaries and canons: here, one will in every three
or four bequeaths books, generally service books. Laymen
seldom possessed Vulgates: only in five known instances: two
givers of Vulgates to colleges or abbeys in the thirteenth century
may possibly have been laymen 2; and two women, Isabella
Elmley^ and Elizabeth de Burgh ^, lady of Clare, possessed

1 One MS. of Hilton's tracts, Ff. 5. 40, f. 126, dissuades from friendship
with heretics.

2 Robert Aldsworth, 1263-84, see C.C.C. Descrip. Cat. 11. 439, and Nicho-
las Thorn, c. 1283, Canterbury, Lxxi. ^ TE, i. 51, * TV, 58.

VIII] LAY people's books 22i

Vulgates in 1348 and 1360 respectively, as did John Worstede^,
a London mercer, in 1368. Agnes, sister of Leonfrin, moneyer
of Lincoln, left the monks of Bath her psalter, "or the value of
the same at the fair of Boston." French Bibles are found in
hardly greater numbers; Edward III possessed one, and Richard
IP. A Yorkshire squire had a French one in 1345^; the earl of
Warwick left French gospels, psalter and Apocalypse in 1359 s
and a certain John Wells had a French Bible illuminated for
himself and his wife in 1361^. These numbers are very small
compared to the number of existing wills by which books were
bequeathed: and it is even more significant that there is no
single will which mentions an English Bible before Wycliffe's
death at all: nor is there any reference to one in any other
historical source.

The references to French psalters and semi-biblical books are
also few. A Lincoln lady left a "mattins of our Lady," possibly
in French, in 1319^; the countess of Salisbury possessed the
Bible Historiale which was taken from king John at Poitiers',
and the earl of Devon in 1377^ left his three daughters one book
each, a primer, a psalter, and "a French book," probably also of
a devotional character.

The only known owners of English psalters before Wycliffe's
death were Robert Felsted^ a vintner of London, who left a
psalter written in Latin and EngUsh, — probably Rolle's, — in
1349. English and French devotional books are also very few.
The small number of these biblical books explains why no
manual which really preceded WycliiYe's day recommended
reading of the scriptures at all, and the entire absence of

^ London Wills, 11. 115; from about 1390 lay lords began to bequeath
Vulgates more frequently; cf. also id. i. 636.

* Sow. Med. Lib. 48.

3 Robert Place, TE, i. 10.

* Bibliom. 193.

^ Med. England, Bateson, M., 321; cf. for French Bibles in the period
immediately succeeding Wycliffe, William King, draper of London, 1393,
London Wills, 11. 312; duchess of Gloucester, 1399, Royal Wills, 183;
Edward Cheyne of Bristol, 1415, Bedfordshire Hist. Rec. Soc. 11. 33.

' Early Line. Wills, 5.

' CVD, xxviii.

* Reg, Brantyngham, 381 ; for the succeeding period and French psalters,
cf. TV, 148-9. Royal Wills, 181-3; TE, i. 179. 271,

* London Wills, i. 636.

222 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLE READING BY LAITY [CH.

reference to the English translation of any book of the Bible
except the psalter is strong evidence of itself that none existed,
or rather, that none was ever much copied. Taken in conjunction
with the other evidence, it is conclusive against the existence of
any such translation.

§ 5. As is natural, there is little mediaeval evidence from
contemporary sources other than wills as to the acquaintance
of lay people with the Bible. Such as there is, shews that the
devout laity who were wealthy enough sometimes possessed a
Latin service book, a book of prayers, similar to the priests':
they usually, however, said the hours of our Lady rather than
those of the breviary. The Knight of the Tower tells a story of
a lady of such great holiness, that "her psalter, her mattins or
other books of devotion" came to her out of the air^; he also
often prefaces a gospel story by the words "as ye have heard
by the word of God in the Gospel," probably in allusion to
sermons. Courtesy books, and books of meals and manners
compiled in the second half of the fifteenth century, regard it
as certain that every lord who was thus served by pages would
have a book of prayers^: but this, though possibly true of the
period from 1300 till 1400, was not certainly so. It is common
for fifteenth century manuscripts to have hail Mary's, our
Father's, and the commandments in English or French prose or
verse inserted among their contents ^i and it is likely that, even
between 1300 and 1400, the biblical knowledge of many lay
nobles was confined to a knowledge of these in French or
English, and that, while some possessed them in manuscripts,
others did not.

It is almost impossible to quote any instance of lay people
who were acquainted with the Bible before Wycliffe's daj^s. The
Knight of the Tower's Bible stories are very interesting: but he

^ La Tour-Landry, 137. The "books of devotion" would naturally mean
primers, or the like : these existed in Latin from the thirteenth century, but
were very rare in English till about 1400, Old Eng. Service Books, Words-
worth and Littlehales, London, 1904, 251. The editors of this work consider
that many more primers remain than any other kind of service book, id. 252,
apparently because primers were books for the laity, and there were more
laity than priests: but evidence from wills shews that, on the contrary,
there were many more breviaries, etc. than primers, because so very few
lay people possessed the latter, certainly before 1400.

2 See EETS, OS, 32. 179. » See Rel. Antiq.

Vlll] THE KNIGHT OF THE TOWER 223

said expressly that they were found for him and read to him by
his two priests and two clerks:

And I said to them that I would make a book of ensamples, for to
teach my daughters, that they might understand how they should
govern them, and know good from evil. And so I made them extraie
me ensamples of the Bible, and other books that I had, as the gestes
of kings, the chronicles of France, Greece, of England, and many other
strange lands. And I made them read me every book: and there I
found a good ensample, I made extraie it out^.

Even so, either the priests "extracted" very inexactly, or the
knight edited the extracts very freely : for, though some of the
Bible stories are right as regards their main point, all are very
loosely told, and several differ from the Bible up to the point of
having nothing in common with it except the names. The story
of Ruth, as the knight tells it, is that Ruth so loved and honoured
her husband, that when he died and his sons by another wife
tried to deprive her of her lands, heritage and household furni-
ture, the husband's friends protected her against the sons, be-
cause she had so cherished her husband : a story that has nothing
in common with the Bible narrative^. Similarly, in the story of
Rahab, the men she saved were not spies, but "certain holy men
come into the town for to teach and preach the people^"; and
Samson and Samuel were confused, so that it is said that
Samson's parents were holy and childless people, to whom the
birth of a son was at length promised by an angel: both they
and their child were to practise fasting and penance, "for the
angel said unto them, 'excess and gormandise in eating and
drinking warreth against the body and the soul.' " So "Samson
the fort" grew up and did great battle against the pagans*.
The knight gives Elizabeth, the mother of S. John Baptist, as
an example of wifely meekness, and tells how if aught happened
amiss in the household, "she would amend it, or keep it secret
unto the time that it were amended, in such wise that her
husband found never occasion of displeasure^." He tells also the
story of S. Mary Magdalene from the gospel, adding that she
lived twenty years afterwards in the desert, and was sent
heavenly food by an angel of God^; and he goes on to tell the

1 La Tour-Landry, 3. ^ Id. 119. ^ Id. 113.

* Id. 115. * Id. 131. « Id. 132.

224 PRE-WYCLIFFITE BIBLE READING BY LAITY [CH. VIII

Story of Martha and Mary Magdalene. "Mary had chosen the
better service, for she sat at his feet and heard his doctrine and
wept, and made sorrow for her sin, and cried him mercy with
humble heart. As the good lord said, 'Truth, there is no service
that God loveth so much as to cry him mercy, and to be repen-
tant of misliving, and to forsake all sin^.' "

Langland and Chaucer wrote at the very end of the pre-
Wyclifhte period, Langland being probably a somewhat younger
man than Wycliffe, and Chaucer younger still. Their works
throw some light on the education and biblical knowledge of the
day. Langland relates how his father and friends had "founden
him to school 2," till he could understand the Latin of the Bible
and service books. Like Gower^, he can scarcely have possessed
a Vulgate himself. He quoted freely from the Bible and the
Fathers, but like all mediaeval writers, seldom with exactness,
since he quoted from memory*. In the account of Dowel, Dobet
and Dobest, written about 1362, he referred to the translation
of biblical passages in sermons : Dobet

... is ronne into Religioun . and hath rendred the Bible
And precheth to the poeple . seynt Poules words,
Libenter suffertis insipientes^, etc.

Chaucer, again, shews great familiarity with the Old and New
Testaments and the Apocrypha, and with persons and passages
in them. His interest however is that of the scholar, not the
devout monk : and he is familiar with the Bible as he was with
the Storial Mirror of Vincent of Beauvais, and the other great
reference books of the age^.

^ La Tour-Landry, 135.

2 Piers Ploughman, C Text, vi. 36-7; cf. Wells, 252, for his schooling.

3 See DNB, Gower's will; P. Plough, iv. 511-12.

* L'Epopee mystique de William Langland, Jusserand, Paris, 1893.

' B Text, VIII. 90; EETS, OS, 38, p. 129; the editor, iv. 739, explains
"rendred" as "construe," "translate." The lines occur also in the A text
of 1362, and the editor suggests a reference to metrical translations of the
gospels ; but these were more common in the north, and A and B texts were
southern ; cf . infra, chapter xii.

* Lounsbury, 11. 389, 509.

CHAPTER IX

Wycliffe as the instigator of a vernacular Bible

§ I. The value of an EngKsh Bible was not the foundation
stone in John's Wycliffe's theory for the reform of Church and
state, but the practical measure to which his theories led him,
at the end of his life. He never included the need of an EngHsh
Bible among the aims for which he openly and principally con-
tended, but those for which he did contend led him almost in-
evitably to produce such a Bible. The formal Hst of propositions
for which he was condemned says nothing of the defence of
vernacular Bibles, and the list of his works which were burnt at
Oxford and Prague has no such item ; much less does it specify a
translation of the Vulgate itself. Neither have the schedules of
heresies and errors, for which his immediate followers were con-
demned, any mention of the defence of translations of the scrip-
tures: and the fighting treatises of Wychffe and the early
Lollards contend for quite different points. But the heresies for
which the Wycliffites were condemned, and the points for which
they contended, could only be popularly understood by means
of a translation of the Bible: and, actually, the connexion be-
tween the Wycliffite theories and the production of an English
Bible was closer still.

The old fashioned, popular, idea of Wycliffe as an early John

Wesley, primarily concerned to promote the evangelisation of

the masses, gives a very false idea of his activities. Wycliffe was

primarily a university professor, with far more affinities in

character and abihty to Peter Abelard, than to John Wesley or

Peter Waldo. The predominant powers in his personality were

intellectual, not spiritual : and it is curious that one in whom the

intellectual side so predominated, — one, for instance, who wrote

a treatise on the true nature of prayer and made it consist solely

in a completely moral life^, — should have kindled the genuine

religious flame which burnt for a generation ^ in Lollard}^ It is

^ Sel. Eng. Works, iii. 219.

^ It was never quite extinguished before the Reformation.

D.W. B.

226 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

curious both that one who was so much a scholar and so Httle a
saint should have inspired men willing to be burnt for their
faith, and that his followers should have lost so soon and so com-
pletely his guarded sense of intellectual balance.
^' Wycliffe took his doctorate of theology in 1372^; his brilliancy
had before this made him a power in the university of Oxford,
and it led him very shortly into politics, and ultimately into the
suspicion of heresy. The chief feature of home politics at the
time was the struggle of John of Gaunt and the feudal party on
the one side, against the clericals, headed by the Black Prince
and William of Wykeham. The most disturbing feature of world
politics was the captivity of the papacy at Avignon, which lasted
jfrom 1308 till 1378, and scandalised Christendom only less than
v,i^the papal schism which followed. The loss of prestige to the
I spiritual power led naturally to attempts to increase that of the
I temporal power, as^»a means to the reform and leadership of
Christendom. Marsiglio of Padua, who died in 1328, had claimed
the equality of the temporal and spiritual power in his Defensor
Pacts : Wycliffe now looked to John of Gaunt and the knights to
reform the Church. Whether Wycliffe's theories were influenced
by those of Marsiglio is doubtful : but that they were confounded
with them by the princes of the Church is assured.

Wycliffe's characteristic theory, his main intellectual lever for
the reform of the Church, was that of dominion by grace.
Through this he became useful to John of Gaunt, and gained
political as well as university eminence. The mediaeval theory
of the papacy had assimilated the feudal conception of "do-
minium" and mediate ownership: just as, in the state, all land
belonged to the king, and through him to his tenants-in-chief,
mesne tenants, and the peasants who cultivated it, so the
papacy had become the final claimant of all spiritual dominion,
— the head of the ladder of grace, which descended through
archbishops and bishops to the parish priests. The novelty of
Wycliffe's theory was that it discarded the idea of mediate
dominion or ownership, and not merely with regard to spiritual
powers, but temporal possessions. He taught that all dominion,
power or ownership, came from God, and that every man was

1 See DNB and Mr H. S. Cronin's John Wycliffe the Reformer, and
Canterbury Hall, Oxford, RHT, viii. 55-76.

IX] GODDIS LAWE 227

His tenant-in-chief, owing no vassalage to any mesne tenant.
Those who disregarded the laws of God were ipso facto dis-
possessed of dominion, — temporal ownership or spiritual power.
Wycliffe's enemies at once exclaimed that such a theory led to
social anarchy, if put in practice: but Wycliffe himself pro-
pounded it only in his academic Latin writings, and guarded
himself from saying that it could at once become the basis for
indiscriminate social reform. It was, nevertheless, to be the
philosophical justification for some scheme of disendowment, on
the ground that the higher clergy were not using the endow-
ments according to the law of God; and it aroused practical
hatred on that score.

: It also led logically to the demand for a translated Bible. If
all men were in immediate relationship to God, and owed Him a
righteousness and obedience to His law for which they them-
feelves were responsible, they needed to study His law personally,
to satisfy themselves that they were keeping it: and to the
Wycliffites, the Bible was preeminently and characteristically
"Goddis Lawe^." Sooner or later Wycliffe and his followers
were bound to see that the doctrine of dominion by grace in-
volved the democratisation, or translation, of "Goddis Lawe."
Herein lay one novelty of the Wyclilhte translations: their aim
at publication. French bibUcal translations were in use at the
time among the highest social classes, in both France and /
England : the translation of Raoul de Presles was completed for
Charles V in 1384, and raised no comment: Wycliffe himself
quoted the right of English lords to use French Bibles, as a
precedent for his own translations 2. Had WycUffe never lived,
parts of the Bible would have been translated into Enghsh at
about this time, and have found a place in the libraries of royal
dukes and other noble bibliophiles. The essential novelty of the
Wycliffite translations was that they were intended for a wider
public, and a lower social class: the knights, in Wychffe's own

^ For Wycliffe's conception of the Bible as the supreme law-giver, see
R. L. Poole's Illustrations of the Hist, of Med. Thought, 1884, 297; for his
use of le.v Dei absolutely as a term for the Bible, F. Wiegand's De Ecclesiae
Notione quid Wiclif docuerit, Leipzig, 1891, 58; and for his conception of
the necessity of a knowledge of the Bible for leading a good life, id.
58-91.

2 EETS, OS, 74, 530.

15—2

228 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

day, rich merchants a httle later, and, finally, agricultural
labourers. The latter could not own it for themselves ; but, like
the early Waldensians, they were taught long passages from it
■by heart, in Lollard "schools" or conventicles. Thus the need
and usefulness of an English Bible was not the foundation stone
of Wycliffe's teaching, or of that of his followers : but it was the
necessary and inevitable corollary of his doctrine of dominion
by grace, and the immediate responsibility of every Christian
for following the life of Christ.

§ 2. The weakness in Wychffe's theory of the immediate re-
lationship of all men to God was soon challenged in its theo-
logical as well as its social bearing. He taught, implicitly if not
explicitly, that there was no authority for the decision of social
and ecclesiastical questions save that of the individual con-
science, seeking enlightenment in the Bible, and guided by the
.early fathers of the Church. Since he disregarded the consensus
of findings of individual consciences, as expressed in the visible
and historic Church, he left himself open to the objection that
the Bible can be very differently interpreted by individuals, and
claimed as final authority for widely differing ecclesiastical and
social systems. The orthodox recognised perfectly that the
Lollards wished to study the Bible mainly to justify their own
ideas of reform: Thorpe the Lollard reported archbishop
Arundel as saying to him at his trial: "Lo, Sirs, this is the
manner and business of this losell and such others, to pick out
such sharp sentences of holy scriptures and of doctors to main-
tain their sect and lore against the ordinance of holy Church !
And therefore, losell ! is it, that thou covetest to have again the
psalter that I made to be taken from thee at Canterbury, to
record sharp verses against us^ ! " But the early Wycliffites, who
laid stress, not on particular verses of the scriptures, so much as
on the whole picture of the simplicity of life of the first Chris-
tians, never realised the extent to which the application of
different texts could be made to cover widely different con-
ceptions of the Christian life.

The justification for Wycliffe's theories lay in the evident need
for reform and reconstruction in Christendom, and the fact that
his panacea, of individual appeal to the Bible for guidance in

1 Pollard, 128.

IX] WYCLIFFE AS REFORMER 229

matters of conduct, had not been tried before, except among the
Waldensian sects, of whom he probably knew httle. Ecclesias-
jtical evils of the day were as apparent to devout Churchmen
/throughout Europe as to Wycliffe: all deplored the evil of a
/ captive papacy, and after 1378, of a divided allegiance in the
/ Church. Churchmen acknowledged and lamented such evils as
/ the non-residence of parish priests and the worldliness of the
I clergy, without perceiving that it was due to absence of training:
! ecclesiastics like Courtenay and Arundel lamented and reproved
it equally fiercely. More, probably, than in any other century it
seemed to saint, socialist and sinner that the visible Church had
I failed, and that change and reorganisation were needed. The
\ efforts of oecumenical councils from 1215 onwards — especially
Lyons I and II, and Vienne — shew that it was not merely re-
formers like Wycliffe who desired radical change, and who even
largely identified the need of reform with the position and policy
of the Curia. So far Wycliffe was justified by his contemporaries"?
in his estimate of the evil tenor of his days : but he was original/
in the insistence of his appeal to gospel and apostolic Christianity
as the standard for succeeding ages. With no perception of the
need for differing organisations for a primitive and developed
Christianity, or for increased complexity of organisation in a
spiritual world power, he contrasted the worldliness, elaborate-
ness, wealth and power of fourteenth century ecclesiastics with
the "meek and poor and charitable living of Christ." He was
novel in insisting that simplicity of life would never be practised f
by the masses, till they personally understood the Christianity ;
of the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Devout churchmen __
at the time objected to the translation of the scriptures because
it involved their vulgarisation in several senses: a genuine
reverence made them declare that the scriptures should only be
handled by trained men, and not be made freely accessible to the
careless and undevout crowd. With this view Wycliffe was
essentially in opposition: all men needed to know "Goddis
Lawe," all men needed to know the vocation to which they were
called, to follow Christ in His meek and poor and charitable
living, and therefore all men, as far as possible, should have
access to the written story of that life. Probably neither
Wycliffe nor his critics realised that a literal imitation of the

230 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

lives of Christ and His apostles would not solve problems of
fourteenth century ecclesiastical organisation.

Wycliffe's demand for more Bible study was also justified as
to a certain extent novel. The Lollards had some excuse, as has
been shewn above, for regarding Bible reading as a new panacea
for social and ecclesiastical ignorance: they were novel among
Englishmen in asking for a widespread appeal to primitive
Christian documents, whether their demand was advisable or
inadvisable. The implications of scripture had always been
preached by the Church ; and, the more devout the ecclesiastic,
the more certainly he had always desired their recognition. But
it had never been recognised that the mass of men would be
better for comparing the teaching of the Church with her primi-
tive documents themselves: the illiteracy of the masses was of
course the chief reason why such a course had never been con-
sidered. But, even in the case of the clergy, individual Bible
study had never been regarded as a necessary duty. A saintly
pastoral life was quite possible without it, and depended on the
practice of spiritual and moral duties : certainly not on individual
attempts to practise new forms of social piety, in supposed
imitation of the apostles, regardless of the authority of those
who were the apostles' successors and equals. Even to-day the
old rule prevails, that no private soldier may read a copy of the
king's regulations, if he is on trial for any military offence; an
officer may bring the book to his cell and allow him to read, but
not to copy, that paragraph of the code under which he is to be
tried, and no other paragraph. If such a practice survives to-day,
in the interests of disciphne, it is not wonderful that a similar
one should have appealed to the higher clergy about 1400 as a
reasonable measure with regard to "Goddis Lawe": it had not
been explicitly necessary before, because "Goddis Lawe" had
been practically inaccessible to the Christian "private," and
many of the Christian "officers."

Finally, the Wycliifite translations may be justified as a re-
markable attempt to produce a scholarly and accurate trans-
lation, without any partizan attempt to emphasise particular
shades of meaning in certain verses or words by a novel trans-
lation : in this it should be distinguished from the versions of the
sixteenth century reformers. The translators were among the

IX] THE EARLY WYCLIFFITE CIRCLE 231

most learned scholars of the day, and their aim was simply to
popularise the connected story of the "meek and poor and
charitable living of Christ " and His apostles. They could obtain
the picture of this state by a literal and faithful translation, and
had no temptation to tamper with the text. The translations
were made while LoUardy was still almost solely an Oxford
movement, when Lollard literature consisted of little else than
the guarded, academic, authority-laden Latin writings of
Wycliffe himself; and not under the second generation of
Lollards, led by Oldcastle. The accusation that the Lollards
falsified the scriptures in their translations was not made by
their contemporaries, even by archbishop Arundel when he
interdicted their use in 1408; and it is almost entirely due to the
addition of their own glosses among the glosses of Rolle's
psalter. Even in this case, there were no controversial changes
in the translation of the text of the psalter itself: and the very
fact that Rolle's psalter was recognised as the only bibhcal
translation which could be used by the orthodox explains the
quickness of the Lollards to insert their own teaching among
the glosses. The Wycliffite translation was faithful because its
authors were scholars, with no special temptation to mistrans-
late or modify the text.

Thus the weakness of English Bible reading, as the Lollard
instrument of Church reform, was that it was not likely to lead
to unity among the reformers; while their expedient was justi-
fiable from three points of view; first, the obvious need of some
reform at the period; secondly, the novelty of urging a wide-
spread acquaintance with the Bible ; and thirdly, the scholarship
and accuracy of the translation they produced.

§ 3. The Wychffite circle at Oxford between 1380 and 1384,
the years when the translation of the Bible was conceived and
partly or wholly carried out, included some of the most learned
scholars of the universitv, and certainly did not account itself
heretical. The chancellor of the university ^ and the other

1 Gairdner, i. 21, Robert Rigge; also T. Brightwell, J. Aston, and T.
Hilman were sufficiently keen Lollards to stand on trial for their opinions,
in the year of Wyclifie's condemnation, id. 21-5: many of his admirers
no doubt relapsed into passivity without a trial after the chancellor and
Brightwell had been condemned by the archbishop for the favour they
had shewn to the Wycliffites. Peter Pateshull, the Augustinian, and

232 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

authorities were all on the side of Wycliffe: and on the only
occasion when the clerical party had tried to bring him to trial
for his opinions, in 1378, they had not been able to carry it
through. Except for the friars, who had to be reckoned with as
the normal lecturers on theology, the whole university was with
Wycliffe, partly out of admiration for his intellectual powers,
partly out of academic jealousy of episcopal interference.
Wycliffe was openly the protege of John of Gaunt, who sheltered
from his castle of Leicester the Wycliffite centre in that town.
Leicester is almost due north of Oxford ; and fifteen miles south
of it, on the Oxford road, was Wycliffe's rectory of Lutterworth,
given him soon after his first service to John of Gaunt in 1374.
Oxford was the centre of academic Lollardy, where Wycliffe
spent most of his time: Leicester was the centre of popular
Lollardy, and Lutterworth lay on the road between them. The
great abbey of S. Mary of the Meadows at Leicester was infected
by Lollardy ; for two of its canons, Nicholas Hereford and Philip
Repingdon, were Wycliffe's most vehement supporters, and
actually spent most of their time at Oxford. The continuator
of Henry Knighton^ was also a canon of the abbey at the same
time, and therefore likely to be well-informed as to Wychffe and
his supporters. The hermit, Swinderby, was the leader in the
Lollard "school" or conventicle held at the chapel of S. John
the Baptist at Leicester, and his friends Walter Brute and
Stephen Bell also preached there. Richard Waytestathe,
chaplain of this chapel, was also a member of this Lollard school.
Many Lollard treatises were copied here, by a "parchemyner,"
William Smith, who was later accused of Lollardy for so doing 2,
Thus, while Wycliffe determined in the schools at Oxford on the
sacrament of the altar or the truth of holy scripture, Leicester
was the seat of his patron, John of Gaunt, and the centre of
popular Lollardy.

The two most stalwart followers of Wycliffe at Oxford were
the Leicester canons, Hereford and Repingdon. Hereford was a
regent master in theology and a vehement enthusiast, far less

Peter Clark or Payne, or 'Peter the Clerk' (for whom see pp. 240, 291),
were later prominent Oxford Lollards, as were David Gotray of Pakring,
monk of Byland and master of theology; see Pollard, 119.

1 See Knighton, and DNB, Knighton.

3 Gairdner, i. 41.

IX] HEREFORD, REPINGDON AND PURVEY 233

cautious than Wycliffe in his opinions and utterances. Walsing-
ham called him "the most violent of John Wycliffe's followers,
among whom were many notable men^," and Hereford went so
far as to maintain in a sermon in 1382 that archbishop Sudbury
had been righteously slain the year before, in the Peasants'
Revolt. He fought very hard for his master's opinions after
Wycliffe's condemnation, and only recanted under the pressure
of imprisonment, and perhaps the threat of worse 2; but, when
once he had recanted, he left his opinions absolutely and became
firmly orthodox. " Since he forsook and revoked all the learning
and opinions of the Lollards," a clerk heard him say, "he had
had greater favour and more deUght to hold against them, than
ever he had to hold with them, while he held with them." He
shewed something of the same capability for enthusiasm when
at the end of his life he entered a Carthusian monastery, after
holding high ecclesiastical office. Philip Repingdon was a
"great clerk" of somewhat similar type: he also made a con-
siderable fight, and was excommunicated before recanting: and
when he became orthodox again, became one of the most
vehement persecutors of the Lollards. A man of a different
type was John Purvey^, Wycliffe's special disciple and secretary.
He had been ordained priest since 1377, and so was probably
about twenty-eight or thirty in 1382, when Wycliffe was con-
demned, and he went with him as his secretary to Lutterworth :
as he is spoken of as "doctor" by his contemporaries, he must
just have taken his doctor's degree. All his contemporaries, in-
cluding the bitterest enemies of the Wyclififites, speak of him as
a great scholar, in terms of special respect. The Carmelite friar
Walden, who was "elected inquisitor general of the faith to

1 See Wykeham's Register, 11. 338, ed. T. F. Kirby ior Hants. Rec. Soc. 1896.

2 Pollard, 165: Thorpe the Lollard was threatened "thou shalt go
thither where Nicholas Hereford and John Purvey were harboured, and
I undertake, ere this day eight days, thou shalt be right glad for to do what
thing that ever I bid thee do." This throws a rather sinister light on
imprisonment in Saltwood Castle.

3 FZ, 40on.; Wilkins prints "Purney" throughout. Thenameisapparenth'
French (see p. 378 n.). Purvey does not seem to have been Wycliffe's "curate"
at Lutterworth, as is sometimes stated. Leland, Collectanea, 1770, in. 409:
" Haec quae sequuntur scripsit Thomas Gascoign, doctor theologiae, Oxon.,
A.D. 1444, edoctus a Johanne Horn octogenario, qui fuit parochiaJis sacerdos
de Lutterworth quo tempore Wiclivus obiit, a.d. 1384 in die S. Sylvestri."
Apparently John Horn was Wycliffe's curate. Purvey his secretary.

234 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

punish the Wycliffites^" and wrote the famous "Bundle of
Lollard heresies" and other learned works against them, speaks
repeatedly of Purvey's learning, even expressly calling him
"doctor." "John Purvey," he says, "was called the glossator
and translator of Wycliffe, for he was the continual Achates of
Wycliffe right down till his death, and drank in his most secret
teaching 2." "Wy cliff e's glossator. Purvey 3," he says in another
place, and in yet another simply, " Wycliffe's glossator*," while
the context shews that he means Purvey. He calls him elsewhere
"the Lollards' library s" and "the Lollards' librarian s," and
"one of Wycliffe's followers, a man of great authority, and a
most notable Doctor, by name, John Purvey'." Purvey's whole
career, as well as contemporary references to him, shew that he
was preeminently a scholar, of great breadth of view: while
Hereford and Repingdon saw one side of a question at a time
and saw it intensely. Purvey saw both, to his own undoing.
"John Purvey," said Thorpe the Lollard of Purvey in later life,
"sheweth himself to be neither hot nor cold^," and though the
judgment was harsh on a man who recanted his opinions under
threat of burning, and returned to them at great risk, neverthe-
less Purvey's writings shew a tendency towards moderation and
hair-splitting that partly justified it^.

Knighton's continuator, the canon of S. Mary's, Leicester,
emphasises the closeness of Purvey's relation to Wycliffe.

The fourth heresiarch was the reverend John Purvey, a simple
chaplain, grave in bearing and countenance, and affecting the ap-
pearance of sanctity beyond his fellows. He was dressed and lived
as a common man, and despising rest he gave all his energy to the
work of travelling: and he gave unwearied efforts to lead the hearts
of the people of his sect with deceitful sermons, and in whatever
manner and way he could. And as he strove to be an example of life
and manners to the remnant of his sect, so he imitated and con-
formed himself to the teaching of his master, as an invincible disciple,
and he boldly confirmed the teaching of his master, John Wycliffe, as
a valiant executor in all matters; for he lived with his master while

^ Doct. I. XV. 2 /^ J xxviii. ^ Id. iii. no.

* Id. III. 127.

^ bibliotheca Lollardorum, Hen. IV, i. 179.

* librarius Lollardorum, Doct. in. 732.

' Doct. I. 619: doctor eximius. * Pollard, 118.

® See pp. 284-5 •

IX] THE STORM IN I382 235

he was still alive, and was thus watered with his treatises, and drank
them the more copiously into his mind, and thus he toiled un-
weariedly with him [Wycliffe] as his inseparable companion, and was
his associate in his doctrines and teaching^.

When the storm broke on the Wydiffites in 1382, Purvey
seems to have acted simply as Wychffe's secretary, and taken
no part in it. The immediate reason of the effort of the clericals
to suppress Wycliffe was almost certainly his presentation of ^
seven propositions to parliament early in that year, urging the
gradual confiscation of all clerical property by special taxation 2,
and not any supposed connexion of Wycliffe with the Peasants'
Revolt of the year before: the mob had actually been bitterly
hostile to John of Gaunt, Wycliffe's patron, and sacked his
palace of the Savoy. Archbishop Courtenay held a council at
the Blackfriars' convent at Holborn, condemned twenty-four
points of Wycliffe's teaching as heretical, and prohibited
Wycliffite preaching. Wycliffe and Purvey retired to Lutter-
worth : but the archbishop had still to reckon with the authorities
of the university of Oxford. Nicholas Hereford preached violent
sermons, and the Carmelite friar, Peter Stokes, tried to tie him
down to a list of doctrinal errors, without success^. Friar Stokes
received orders to publish the condemnation of Wycliffe's
teaching just before Corpus Christi day, and the chancellor,
Robert Rigge, was asked to assist him: but the chancellor re-
fused. Not only that, but the Lollard Repingdon was appointed
to preach the sermon before the university on Corpus Christi
day: and the chancellor, and the mayor of Oxford, with armed
forces, attended in state. Repingdon declared that the duke of
Lancaster "had a mind to defend all the Lollards," and justified
Wycliffe's teaching: but the archbishop summoned the chan-
cellor and another Lollard to London, condemned him for con-
tempt, and then, at the request of William of Wykeham,
pardoned him. The chancellor signed the condemnation of
Wycliffe's propositions, and was sent back to publish the con-
demnation of Wycliffe, Hereford and Repingdon, — a highly un-
popular act in the university^. Hereford, Aston 5, Alington,

1 Knighton, 11. 178. - Gairdner, i. 18. ^ Id. 21. * Id. 23-5.

^ Cf. Bernard, Cat. 197Q, § 14, De Jo. Aston (prob. Ashton) et Nicholas
Hereford. There was a John Ashton, fellow of Merton, who wrote a tract

236 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

Bedeman and other Lollards had already, on May 21, been
prohibited by William of Wykeham from preaching in the parish
church of Odiham, and elsewhere in the diocese of Winchester^,
and by July i Aston had been imprisoned and had recanted, and
Hereford, Repingdon, and Thomas Hilman had been excom-
municated by Courtenay. Oxford was still in a ferment, and a
disturbance was caused in the church of S. Mary the Virgin when
an Irish Cistercian monk preached against the Wyclifhtes, de-
nouncing them as Lollards. The university authorities suspended
him, but the king's council protected him and friar Stokes from
more extreme measures.

Nicholas Hereford meanwhile had started for Rome, carrying
an appeal which was to prove unsuccessful. When he returned
at the end of the year, it was to find that the archbishop had
succeeded in crushing LoUardy for the time being. The Leicester
Lollards had been cowed by the imprisonment and recantation
of Swinderby, the hermit, in July, and the Oxford ones dis-
couraged by the recantation of Repingdon in October and Aston
in November. Repingdon threw no backward glances to
LoUardy: he became later abbot of S. Mary of the Meadows,
chancellor of Oxford in 1397, in 1400 chaplain and confessor to
Henry IV, and in 1404 bishop of Lincoln. Hereford was,
later, imprisoned in Saltwood castle: and at length, he too
was reconciled and taken back to favour. Another Lollard was
warned later.

For the pity of Christ, bethink thee how great clerks Philip
Repingdon, Hereford and Purvey were, and yet are, and also
B.[edeman], that is a well understanding man: which also have for-
saken and revoked all the learning and opinions which thou and
such other hold : wherefore, since each of them is mickle wiser than
thou art, we counsel thee for the best, that by the example of these
four clerks, thou follow them, submitting thee as they did 2.

The archbishop had succeeded in reducing LoUardy to silence in
Oxford: the leaders had recanted, and no doubt many who had

on the conjunction of Saturn and Mars, in 1358, Ashmole 393, §§ 36, 37,
and a friar John Ashton, who wrote Quaestiones super sentencias et super
canonem missae, Bernard, Cat. Worcs. 877, probably neither of them the
Wycliffite. C.C.C. Oxford 240 is late fourteenth century MS. of Bonaventura's
Stimulus Amoris, written t)y John Ashton, to whom it belonged.

1 Wykeham's Register, 11. 337.

2 Pollard, 162.

IX] LOLLARD RECANTATIONS 237

been attracted to their teaching abandoned it without risking a
trial for their opinions. Of the Oxford circle, only Purvey re-
mained with Wycliffe at Lutterworth : and various Lollards, hke
Swinderby, Bell and Brute, continued their preaching at the risk
of being burnt as relapsed heretics.

Two causes account for the archbishop's success in this
summer of 1382 : the real horrors of imprisonment and a shameful
death, combined with the archbishop's skill in shewing favour
and benignity to those who recanted: and the academic,
scholarly characteristics of the first generation of Lollards at
Oxford. Though the expedition and regularisation of the
punishment of heresy by death by burning was not carried out
till 1401, heresy had continuously been punished by burning on
the continent, and this was legally possible in England : in fact
the first burning of a Lollard was by common law, before the
passage of the De Comburendo statute. King Richard II
threatened sir Richard Stury with a shameful death in 1395, if
he did not recant his Lollard opinions. But the conversion of
the leading Lollards, the four great clerks, was not solely due to
fear or bribery; all early Lollard writings are more guarded,
more practical, and less extreme, than those of their followers
later. As Purvey himself wrote of the points in dispute between
the bishops and the Lollards: "Who that ever granteth all,
granteth much falsehood, and who that ever denieth all, denieth
many truths^." The early Lollards were not men to whom the
reasonable or scholarly arguments of their opponents could
make no appeal, or who were prepared to hold that their own
opinions were right, if Christendom pronounced them wrong.
Not only their personal fears or ambitions, but their education
and training, was all against their continuing to lead a set of
followers who were less learned and more unbalanced than
themselves.

Such was the turning point in the last four years in Wycliffe's
life: the condemnation of some of his views, and those of his
chief followers, in the summer of 1382. Before that time he had
lived as the centre of a set of learned clerks at Oxford: after-
wards, with his secretary, Purvey, at Lutterworth. It was

1 See p. 463.

238 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

between these years, of 1380 to 1384, that, as passages in his
writings shew, he was turning to the idea of producing a ver-
nacular Bible.

§ 4. There is evidence that he did do so, both in the state-
ments of his contemporary and hostile critics, and in his own
writings. The man most hkely to be well informed on the subject
of the biblical translations condemned in 1408 was archbishop
Arundel. He was aware of the academic discussion at Oxford
over the lawfulness of vernacular Bibles in the years 1400-1407,
and he probably chose Oxford for the scene of the prohibition of
English Bibles of set purpose. He wrote in 1412 to pope John
XXII, relating his efforts to suppress the teaching and followers
of "that wretched and pestilent fellow John Wycliffe, of dam-
nable memory, that son of the old serpent, the very herald and
child of antichrist," and lamenting that

In these last times, alas, — and we lament it with no small bitterness
of heart, — in the most fair garden of the glorious university of Oxford
. . .there grow together poisoned herbs and infected plants, whose
poisoned seeds, too long allowed to ripen in the aforesaid garden, are
blown by the wind of pride and scattered abroad into the fair field of
the kingdom of England.

After describing Wycliffe's iniquity in seventeen vigorous Hues,
he specified as the climax of his offences that "to fill up the
measure of his malice, he devised the expedient of a new trans-
lation of the scriptures into the mother tongue." Arundel was
aware that old and unreadable Anglo-Saxon translations existed
in abbeys in England, and his words " new translation " indicated
the crown of the offence : that the translations were in a tongue
comprehensible to all. There is no hint in the letter that the
translation was a bad or false one, but the complaint was merely
that such a translation had been made at all^. Wycliffe, then,
"devised the expedient": his secretary, John Purvey, did the
bulk of the work.

1 The words " new translation " cannot be pressed further than I have here
indicated. In face of the absolute MS. evidence that no complete Middle-
English translation of the Bible, and almost certainly no partial ones,
were made before c. 1380 (see chap. xiii. on contemporary partial English
versions and their date), it cannot be held that Arundel knew of some
other English version, made perhaps between 1 300-1 380, such as would
be comprehensible to men of Wycliffe's generation, and that he was merely
rebuking Wycliffe for making one of his own, when this already existed.

IX] KNIGHTON'S CONTINUATOR 239

The evidence of Arundel is valuable, because it is that of the
very man who was chiefly responsible for the "stopping ot
scripture" through the prohibitory canons of 1408: but the
evidence of Henry Knighton's continuator is of even more value.
He was a canon of S. Mary of the Meadows at the same time
as Hereford and Repingdon, at the time also when Swinderby
the hermit was sometimes the guest of the abbey: and he re-
mained under the new regime, when the converted Repingdon
returned as abbot. He might well have had Lollard sympathies
before Wycliffe's condemnation: he does shew in his work that
he was a partizan of John of Gaunt : but he wrote his account of
the doings of the year 1382 later, when Wycliffe had been con-
demned. His account was not only likely to be well informed,
since he was in touch with Hereford and Repingdon, but because
it must have been seen later by Repingdon his orthodox abbot.

"In those days^," he wrote, of the year 1382, "flourished master \
John WycUffe, rector of the church of Lutterworth, in the county of
Leicester, the most eminent doctor of theology of those times. In
philosophy he was reckoned second to none, and in scholastic learning
without rival. This man strove greatly to surpass the skill of other
men by subtlety of knowledge and the greatness of his ability, and to
traverse their opinions. . . .This master John Wycliffe translated into
English, (not, alas, into the tongue of angels), the gospel which Christ
gave to clerks and doctors of the Church, in order that they might
sweetly minister it to laymen and weaker men, according to the
message of the season and personal need, with the usury of their own
minds : whence, through him, it [the gospel] is become more common
and open to laymen, and women who are able to read, than it is wont
to be even to lettered clerks of good intelligence. Thus the pearl of
the gospel is scattered abroad and trodden under foot of swine, and
what is wont to be the treasure both of clerks and laymen is now
become the jest of both. The jewel of clerks is turned into the sport
of the laity, so that that has become the 'commune aeternum-' of
laymen, which heretofore was the heavenly talent of clerks and
doctors of the Church."

The canon is here exactly explaining the orthodox attitude to
the Bible at the time. It ought not to be accessible to lay people,
but priests should explain passages from the Sunday gospels and
epistles in their sermons, not translating them, but telling the

^ Knighton, 11. 151-2.

^ A reference to the 'eternal gospel' of abbot Joachim of Flora: which
taught that the era of the Father was past, that of the Son passing, that
of the Holy Ghost about to be ushered in.

240 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [cil.

story in their own words, with its moral inferences, " the usury
of their own minds." Master John Wydiffe's fault is that he has
translated the gospel into Enghsh at all, not that he has made
an inaccurate or bad translation. Actually, the translations
were due rather to Wycliffe's secretary than to Wycliffe, but the
canon was justified in speaking of the work "instigated" by
WycUffe as his own.

Finally, the words of John Hus, though not those of a con-
temporary, have great weight. The intercourse between Oxford
and Prague was close; the Wychfhte Peter Payne, who debated
with friar Walden at Oxford^, became the instructor of Jerome
of Prague: the latter was at Oxford, transcribed copies of the
Trialogus and Dialogus in 1401-2^, just when an eminent friar
was determining against the lawfulness of vernacular Bibles 3,
and took his copies back to Prague. Two other Bohemian
Wychffites, Nicholas Faulfisch and George of Knychnicz were in
Oxford in 1407, when the discussion over Enghsh Bibles was
raging fiercely before its extinction by Arundel*, and they had
copied and personally corrected Wycliffe's De Veriiate Sacrae
Scripturae and two other treatises, and took them back to
Prague. Oldcastle corresponded with Hus himself: and the
tracts of a Lollard, Clement Folkhirde, were brought to Bohemia
in 1410. More Wycliffite treatises exist in manuscript in Prague
and Vienna than in England to-day: and all these points justify
the acceptance of Hus's evidence as to what was popularly be-
lieved by Englishmen of the day. "It is said by the English,"
says Hus, in a work written in 1411, "that he [Wycliffe] himself
translated the whole Bible from Latin into Enghsh^," and the
statement was substantially accurate. Englishmen of the day
knew nothing as to whether the work was actually done by
Wycliffe or his secretary: they said, naturally enough, that it
was "Wycliffe's Bible."

§ 5- Wycliffe's own attitude towards translations of the Bible
can be traced from his Latin writings of undoubted authorship,
and in one written during the last year of his life there are

1 Doct. I. 9.

* Intercourse between English and Bohemian Wycliffites in the Early
Fifteenth Century, Poole, R. L., in EHR, vii. 306. ^ See p. 289.

* See p. 294. * Hus, Htstoria et Monumenta, 1715, i. 136.

JX] THE DE VERITATE SACRAE SCRIPTURAE 24I

distinct references to translations which he or his followers had
made, which had roused opposition from ecclesiastical digni-
taries^: there is nothing, however, in these works to shew that
the whole Bible had been published, although the first trans-
lation was almost certainly in course of production, and may
have been completed. Wycliffe had from the first appealed to
the records of primitive Christianity to support his social
theories, and passages where he bases his theories on some
biblical verse, or claims that the Bible is the final authority for
Christian doctrine, would be far too numerous to quote. It is
interesting, however, to trace in his works written between 1378
and his death in 1384 his efforts expressly to defend the value of
the Bible as the final authority'^; to shew that the people at large
were ignorant of the gospel because of defective preaching; then,
that it was necessary for all, even the simplest, to know the
gospel, so that they might follow Christ in meekness of living;
then, that the gospels ought to be translated into English, for
this end ; and finally, that it was right that such translations had
been made, though prelates raged against them.

Wycliffe wrote his De Veritate Sacrae ScripUirae^ within the
year 1378*, primarily to defend the "truth" of holy scripture,

1 See F. D. yiaXthew's Authorship of the Wycliffite Bible in EHR, x. 91-99.
This list of quotations dealing with translations, however, cannot be
regarded as settling the question, because they are all drawn from English
versions of Wycliffe's works, which may have been made by himself or
by some disciple, and either within or after his life-time. Wycliffite and
Lollard Latin tracts frequently have English counterparts, sufficiently
close to shew the source of the English version throughout, but not word
for word translations. The English tracts are, naturally, more popular
and less measured in language : scholastic references are generally omitted,
and the whole tone is generally more violent; additions, interjections, and
omissions are frequent. It is often difficult to tell whether the greater
violence of general tone, or of interpolated passages, was due (a) to the
original author's relaxation of caution in addressing an unlettered audience,
in translating his own tract, {b) to the greater temperamental violence,
or less scholarship, of some contemporary who translated the Latin tract,
or (c) to the fact that the English version was made some years later than
the Latin, when the claims of both orthodox and Lollards had increased
in bitterness and definiteness. The passages cited by Matthew from some
of these English Wycliffite tracts cannot stand en bloc as coming from
genuine Wycliffe tracts: see pp. 248-9.

2 For a catena of Latin quotations from Wycliffe's works relative to
the need of biblical knowledge for leading a good life, see Wiegand's De ecc.
Hotione, 58-91. * De Verit. i. xlviii.

* As I am informed by Mr Cronin, who will shortly publish a chronological
list of his writings. The much shorter M.E. tract, The holy prophet David

D.W.B. 16

242 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

against those who attacked its apparent errors and inconsis-
tencies, and who pointed out that the hteral following of all
biblical precepts was impossible in practical life. In it he in-
sisted again and again that all the faithful were bound to know
the scriptures, to obtain salvation: that their meaning was
apparent, not only to the learned, but to the simple, and that
the first duty of a priest, and in a lesser degree, of all the faithful,
was to preach the gospel. The work was learned and academic;
in it he attacked those " modern doctors" who wished to qualify
the authoritative value of the Bible, characterizing them as
"Lollards^" or heretics themselves. Moreover, he defended the
old fourfold interpretation of scripture, with the characteristic
qualification that the three subordinate meanings were also
literal and authoritative if "immediately" drawn from the
Bible: but not if "mediately" or through some later commenta-
tor 2. He called Lyra "a copious and ingenious commentator of
scripture"," and like him regarded the literal meaning of scrip-
ture as the basis and guarantee of all sound interpretation. He
did not, however, in any way surpass Lyra in his estimate of the
worth of this primary sense, but rather the reverse. "Holy
scripture," he said, "is the preeminent authority for every
Christian, and the rule of faith and of all human perfection";
all priests should have a good knowledge of the Bible, in order
to carry out their pastoral office^, and all Christians, especially

saith, printed pp. 445-56, takes up exactly the standpoint and arguments
of the De Verit., and I beUeve it to be Wychffe's, or at any rate made
between 1378-84. I do not however quote it in this connexion, as Wychffe's
attitude can be as well illustrated by works indubitably his. For a certain
friar Claxton. doctor of divinity, "who said that holy scripture was
a false heresy," see Rawlinson, C. 411, p. i.

1 De Verit. i. xxiii, xxiv: "moderni doctores lolium in universitatibus
seminantes," a very old paraphrase for a heretic, see p. 42. The special argu-
ment of Wychffe's opponents, which he takes most space in refuting, is
that the Bible apparently contradicts itself in places, e.g. as regards the
day of the crucifixion in S. John and the synoptists, etc., and is therefore
untrustworthy; i. xxiv, 275.

^ Id. I. 119-23. This introduction of the theory of feudal tenure is
similar to that in his theory of "dominium by grace." Cf. Opus Evang.
I. 397, for the "catholic" sense of holy scripture.

' he Verit. i. 275, xxxv.

* Id. II. 161-4; this might accord with mediaeval theory, but it had
not been reached in mediaeval practice. Cf. 11. 147, "for it is further
clear, that this knowledge is above all to be demanded of the faithful, and
especially of priests " ; 11. 171, 136, 137, " all priests ought, even according to
the canon law, to study the scriptures."

IX] EVERY CHRISTIAN SHOULD KNOW THE BIBLE 243

priests and bishops, ought to know in the first place the whole
law of scripture^. Christ is the power and wisdom of God, Whom
no Christian can effectively know except through the scriptures,
and therefore every Christian is bound to know them; to be
ignorant of the scriptures is to be ignorant of Christ, since Christ
is the scripture which we are bound to know, and the faith which
we are bound to believe ^.

" For clearly, although they [all Christians] be infants, although
they be deaf, although through worldly pride they are ignorant of
scripture, yet it behoves them to hear God speaking His law in these
scriptures, if they are ever to be saved^." "The third fiction is," he
continues, " that there is no need to preach, since the Christian faith
is widely enough spread, since every old woman knows her creed and
pater noster well enough, and this is sufficient for salvation: theo-
logians, they say, are commonly heretics, and so it is prudent to be
only 'wise unto sobriety*.'" "Therefore all Christians, especially
secular lords, ought to know and defend the holy scriptures^."

Wycliffe returned in his later works to those who, as he said,
"attacked holy scripture": "the fathers," he says^ "studied
the scriptures, for they dared not, like foolish modern heretics,
call the gospel heretical and damnable," and there are heretics
nowadays who try to prove that the faith of the gospel is im-
practicable from certain sayings of Christ, Who bade a man
pluck out his eye and cast it from him, not, however, using the
words in the sense they thought'.

These modern satraps shut up the kingdom of heaven, because they
persecute in many ways the true meaning of holy scripture and its
professors, so that they say in the schools that holy scripture is
utterly false ^.

Besides thus defending the value of holy scripture from its
academic assailants, WycUffe often complained that the increase
of popular preaching had tended to thrust the old fashioned
sermon on the Sunday gospel into the background. He attacked
the friars as being especial offenders in this respect :

1 De Verit. 11. 137. « Id. 11. 170. * Id. 11. 138.

* Id. II. 179. ^ Id. I. 136. * Op. Evang. i. 160. ' Id. i. 158.

* Id. in. 38. Many academically subtle and minute arguments
about the Bible, or its authority, were answered by Wycliffe, — e.g. he
shews that the friars were not justified in saying their order had been
founded by Christ because "many things Jesus did which are not written
in this gospel," Sermones, 11., de Sanctis, 56; — but the real point at issue was
that of the interpretation of scripture.

i6 — 2

244 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

"Do we believe that they who beg immediately after the sermon
preach the word of God from a sincere heart, or that they speak, as
a rule, from God who lay stress upon apocryphal poems, fables and
lies, such as will please their hearers^?" "What harm results to
the Church, when, as if bending the faith of scripture, they aim at
rhymes, flatteries, detractions and lies ! For they say that, unless they
add some novelties beyond the accustomed manner of preaching,
there will appear no difference between theologians subtle in sowing
the word of God, and country priests of small learning-." "And it
is clear how blameworthy they are who hear more eagerly and dili-
gently the deeds of Gentiles and fables of the poets than the gospel
of Christ: but more blameworthy are they who preach apocryphal
matter to the people 3. "

The friars, he says,

Like the scribes and Pharisees of the old law, tell fabulous stories
to the people; and, when accused of silence about the gospel, they
say that whatsoever truth is useful to the people is the gospel*.

They pride themselves on having graduated at the university,
and then preach flashy instead of simple discourses:

For some by rhyming, and others by preaching poems and fables,
adulterate in many ways the word of God ; . . . the poor priests preach
purely and freely the word of God: but the friars preach feigned
words and poems in rhyme, and therefore the friars' preaching is
acceptable to the people*.

Wycliffe often dealt with the objection that many of the laity
were too simple to have the text of the gospel expounded to
them, and asserted that this was necessary for all men, however
simple. Sermons ought to be addressed to those "not guided
by human praise, but whom experience has shewn to be capable
and proficient in the word of God^." Every command of the
pope should be in harmony with holy writ, "and this is one
reason why every catholic ought to know the hol}^ scriptures'."
True priests ought to reveal holy scripture to their people, and
they should not plead the illiteracy of their flock as an excuse for
not doing so, since that illiteracy is the result of their own short-
comings : their material cannot be worse than that of the primi-
tive Church, which attained such glorious triumphs : the apostles

^ Polem. Works, i. 41.

- Sermones, 1. xvii; iv. 266; this set of sermons was composed between
1380-4: see I. xxvii-xxxiv. ^ jd m. 120. * Op. Evang. iii. xi, 7.

* Expositio super Matthaei xxiii, in Opera Minora, Loserth, J., London,
1913, 331. * Polem. Works, i. 310-11. ' De Ecclesia, vi.

IX] WYCLIFFE ANSWERS OBJECTIONS 245

themselves were simple and illiterate : the knights of Christ now-
adays should preach sharply against such sloths WycHffe dealt
in another place with the classical argument of those who
opposed the opening of the scriptures to the illiterate,— the
Nolite sanctum dare canibus which had been used by Innocent III
in his condemnation of the Waldensian translations at Metz, and
was so often quoted by the opponents of the WycHffite trans-
lations 2. He cited his favourite doctor, S. Augustine, as saying
that any man, however conscious of infirmity and sin, may run
to hear the words of Christ, Who said, Ask, and ye shall receive;
gentiles and heathen and even gross sinners should all have the
gospel proclaimed to them : the " dogs " of the text are those who
tear and disfigure the teaching of Christ, and the "swine " before
whom we should not cast the "pearls" are sensualists: but we
should not refrain from preaching the gospel because some such
men may be among our audience 3. The "dogs" and "swine"
should not be interpreted as meaning the ilhterate faithful.

Following on this contention, that the gospels should be ex-
plained to the simple, WycHffe was led to argue that they ought
to be translated for this purpose. Probably, at first, he had in
mind only that lords and knights should be able to use such
translations, and explain them to their households, or that the
less lettered priests should use them; it was the followers of
Wycliffe, and not Wycliffe himself, who went further, and desired
that every man should be acquainted with the gospels, through
learning them by heart. WycHffe was no half-lettered Peter
Waldo, to spend his time teaching the gospels by heart in the
vernacular, though he did once mention the practice with
approval: he wished chiefly to place the EngHsh Bible as a
weapon in the hands of the "knights." A certain person wrote
to Wycliffe, asking him five questions about the love of God, and
in particular, what state of Hfe was most fitting for a man who
wished to love Him. Wycliffe answered that the man's state
might be that of priest or knight or labourer: but all those who
were thus in the heavenly way must

carefully study the gospel in that tongue in which the meaning of
the gospel was clearest to them: for all the faithful were bound to
follow the Lord Jesus Christ, and the more closely they followed

1 Sermones, i. 264-5. ■ Op. Evang. 11. 383-8. 3 See pp. 429, 432.

246 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

Him, the more and the better did they love Him; and, since the
deeds and teaching of Christ were more clearly expressed in the
gospel than elsewhere, it was obvious how much the careful study
of this book profited the faithfuP.

Another reference to the need of translations of the Bible occurs
in a tract written especially for knights and secular lords :

Christ and His apostles converted much people by uncovering of
scripture, and this in the tongue which was most known to them : . . .
why then may not the modem disciples of Christ gather up the frag-
ments of that same bread? The faith of Christ ought therefore to
be recounted to the people in both languages^.

When Wycliffe again insisted that there was

no man so rude a scholar but that he might learn the words of the
gospel according to his simplicity, . . . and that these considerations
should move all the faithful to learn the gospel,

he was obviously referring to the learning of some vernacular
translation^. In another tract, he shews that his followers had
been called to task by their opponents for translating consider-
able portions of the gospels in their sermons*. Probably even
before the translation of the Bible, or before its publication,
Lollard sermons had tended, like those of the Waldensians^, to
be preceded by the reading of long passages from the Bible in
English; and from this practice, or alongside with it, arose the
Wycliffite plan to issue an authoritative translation. About
1381 ^ in any case, Wycliffe issued a Latin tract, De nova prae-

1 Op. Minora, 9. The English translation, which is close, is in Sel.
Eng. Works, in. 183-5. The Latin is the original, as can be seen by com-
paring the concise, scholastic definition of love in 11. 11-13, with the halting
and inexact treatment in English, p. 183 : as the translator says, "All these
questions been hard to tell them truly in English." The English may have
been Wycliffe's own work, or translated earlj', for it adds nothing to the
Latin. "And thus it helpeth here to Christian men, to study the gospel
in that tongue in which they know best Christ's sentence;. . .he that
sueth Christ most nigh loveth him most, and is most loved of God," p. 184.

^ Spec. saec. dom., cf. Op. Minora, xi, quoted Johann Wiclif und
seine Zeit, Buddcnsieg, R., Gotha, 1885, p. i6g, from Vienna MS. 3929,
cf. Sermones, i. ix.

' Op. Evang. i. 92: quin verba evangelica possit addiscere, . . . istud
moveret quemcumque fidelem ad evangelium addiscendum. The Op.
Evang. was written in 1384: cf. i. v.

* The translation of single verses would have been no novelty, and
could not have aroused such an opposition.

^ See p. 27: and for the translation of the whole text of the Sunday
gospels in the course of Wycliffe's English sermons, see p. 317.

* See Polem. Works, i. 112.

IX] WYCLIFFE MENTIONS ENGLISH GOSPELS 247

varicatione Mandaioriim, in which he considered various opinions
and deeds of his enemies as evasions of the ten commandments.
He began by stating that certain men (probably himself and
his followers), "considering that Christ and his apostles wrote
the faith of scripture in different languages," have collected the
teaching of the commandments in Latin and English, dividing
them into sections, for the use of different men^. He then ex-
plained briefly the contents and divisions of the decalogue, and
in the body of the work shewed how various practices of his
enemies fell under the heading of one or the other sins. The first
practice that he attacked, as an evasion of the first and chief com-
mandment, was the opposition of the friars to the translation of
the gospel : either the translation of long passages in their sermons,
or the proposal to prepare a Wycliffite translation at Oxford.

"Our Pharisees and satraps say," he wrote, "that a man ought
not to preach nor collect together the gospel in the vulgar tongue,
lest perchance suspicion should be aroused from its translation into
English: but [they say that] the seven mortal sins, and the com-
mandments of the decalogue may be explained to the people in
English.. . .And some say that this is the reason why they do not
wish these rudiments of the faith from the gospel to be preached to
the people in English : because, according to the faith, they ought to
live as Christ did, and to follow His manner of life: and when Christ's
manner of life should be disclosed, it would be clearer than daylight
that they are opposed to Him in their lives, and not Christians de-
serving commendation, but rather the chief disciples of antichrist.
And therefore they oppose the turning of the gospels into the vulgar
tongue, so as to hide their baseness^."

It is quite possible that some rumour of the Wycliffite trans-
lations had aroused this opposition to which Wycliffe referred,
but there can be Httle doubt that a passage in a tract written in
1383 speaks of the translation of the Wycliffite Bible, or part
of it. Wycliffe argued that those things which are lawful accord-
ing to God's law, the law of grace, are indeed lawful, though
they may be contrary to the law of man :

^ Polem. Works. 116.

2 Id. I. 126. The "rudiments of the faith from the gospel" cannot
refer to the usual skeleton of theology for lay people, — the command-
ments, creeds. 7 sins, 7 deeds of mercy, etc., because these ahva^-s had
been preached in English. The reference is to the disclosing (detegendum),
of His manner of life: practically, the translation of long passages from
the gospels. Buddensieg dates this tract as 1381.

248 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH.

Whence is their folly clearly seen, who wish to condemn those
writings as heretical for the reason that they are written in English,
and acutely prick sins which disturb this realm 1. For it is lawful for
the noble queen of England, the sister of the emperor, to have the
gospel written in three languages, that is, in Czech and in German
and in Latin : and it w-ould savour of the pride of Lucifer to call her
a heretic for such a reason as this ! And since the Germans wish in
this matter reasonably to defend their own tongue, so ought the
English to defend theirs with reason.

The whole passage shews that Wydiffe was not speaking of con-
troversial tracts written in English, because he distinctly con-
nects the wish of the Germans to defend their own tongue "in
this matter," the translation of the Bible, with that of English-
men. The English translation for which he was responsible was
meant mainly for the upper classes, though for those of some-
what lower rank than had possessed French Bibles, or the more
frequent French Historia Scholasiica, before. The Church must
be brought back, he argued elsewhere, to the position Christ
wished her to occupy: this reformation could not be expected of
the secular clergy, and secular lords could do most to secure it :

Temporal lords can study the gospels in the tongue known to them,
and bring back the Church to the order w-hich Christ instituted 2.

Wycliffe referred to these translations twice more, in a tract
written shortly before his death.

"To-day it is considered very shocking that the gospel is translated
into English, and preached to the people, as is manifest in the case
of bishops, friars, and their accomplices^." "Those who preach the
gospel in the form and language in which they are the better under-
stood are brought low-: while friars, bishops, and their abettors are
shocked that the gospel should become known in English*."

While there is no doubt at all that Wycliffe encouraged the
writing of scriptural and other works in English, for the in-
struction of "lewid men," there is some difficulty in deciding
whether any of the many popular English versions of his own

^ De tyiplici vinculo amoris, in Polem. Works, i. 168. Wycliffe has
declared already, see p. 247, that this was the reason for the opposition
to translations. For Anne of Bohemia's different versions of the gospels,
see also pp. 278-80.

2 Expos, super Matt., Op. Minora, xliv.

3 Op. Evang. iii. 36: hodie multum horretur quod evangelium anglicetur.
* Id. 115: abhorrent quod evangelium in Anglico cognoscatur.

IXJ WYCLIFFE"S [?] ENGLISH WORKS 249

works were by his own hand. Some of these contain references
to the EngUsh translations and the opposition they were arous-
ing, but they may have been made in WycUffe's hfe-time, or in
the years immediately succeeding his death. Before Wychffe's
withdrawal from Oxford in 1382 there was already a nucleus of
less educated Lollards at Leicester, and elsewhere. From 1382
Wychffe and Purvey lived only fifteen miles from Leicester, and
it is more hkely that the English versions of WycUffe's works
were due to Purvey or the Leicester Lollards, than to Wycliffe
himself. WycUffe's English sermons, for instance, were most
probably composed at this time from skeletons or notes; and
these twice refer to the progress of the English translations:

Epistles of apostles been gospels of Christ, for He spake all in

them, and Christ may not err And this moveth some men to tell

in English Paul's epistles, for some men may better wit hereby what
God meaneth by Paul^.

Another passage may very probably have been written about
1387, when Purvey was writing his glosses on the English
gospels, and was prohibited from preaching in the neighbourhood
of Bristol:

And hereto re one great bishop of England, as men say, is evil-
apaid that God's law is written in English, to lewid men; and he
pursueth a priest, for he writeth to men this English, and summoneth
him and travailleth him, that it is hard to him to breathe. . . . But
one comfort is of knights, that they savour much the gospel, and
have will to read in English the gospel of Christ's life 2.

§ 6. It will thus be seen that the evidence that the fourteenth
century English Bible was really due to Wycliffe is cumulative.

1 Epistolae dominicales, Sel. Eiig. Works, 11. 221; cf. r. 129: "God would
that these lords. . .knew the truth of God's law in their motlier tongue";
III. 98: "And sith the truth of God standeth not in one language more
than in another. . .why may we not write in English the gospel?. . .And
so the kindred of Pharisees letteth the Gospel to be learned of the people. . .
writing of the gospel in English, and of good lore accordmg thereto, is a
subtlety and mean to the common people, to kunne it the better"; id. 100:
"it is a rule to Christian men. . .to kunne. . .the Gospel and other points
of holy writ needful to their souls, . . . whether it be told to them and
written in Latin, or in English, or in French, or in Dutch, either in any
other language, after that the people hath understanding." Cf. the Five
Questions on Love, in. 184, more probably WycUffe's own work: "it helpeth
to Christian men to study the gospel in that tongue in which they know-
best Christ's sentence."

- Sel. Ens:. Works, 1. 209.

250 WYCLIFFE AND THE VERNACULAR BIBLE [CH

There are the references to EngHsh translations in his works:
there are the words of Arundel, the archbishop who lived through
the five-and-twenty years of controversy about the validity of
English Bibles, and who finally condemned the Wyclifhte trans-
lations: there are the words of Knighton's continuator and
Walden: there is more contemporary evidence as to author-
ship than any that could be found, for instance, to prove
that Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales. Finally, there is the
argument that none of the contemporaries who mention English
biblical translations, or who give a list of them, know of the
existence of any translations except Wycliffe's. They do not
know of contemporary partial translations, which perhaps
existed at the time only in a single manuscript : such ignorance
is natural enough. But if, as has been suggested, the so-called
Wycliffite Bible were really pre-Wyclifhte, it is incredible that
those who were seeking for precedents to justify the use of
English translations should have been completely ignorant of
its existence : for these translations which we now call Wycliffite
did not merely exist in scattered manuscripts, but in great
numbers.

Trevisa wrote his Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk in 1387,
and he clearly knew of no earlier biblical translations save Saxon
ones. The absence of reference to the Wycliffite translations may
shew merely that by 1387 they were not yet widely enough cir-
culated to have reached Trevisa: but it is much more likely that
the raising of the question of biblical translations in the Dialogue,
was due to the fact that the lawfulness of the Wycliffite trans-
lations was already in debate. In any case, Trevisa knew of no
recognised Middle-English translations to instance.

Purvey's tract in defence of English Bibles^ of 1405 could not
allege any Middle-English translation of a biblical book as a
precedent, though some precedents so wide of the mark as
Gaytrik's catechism were made to do service. Two friars wrote
against biblical translations between 1401 and 1408^, and they
knew of no earlier precedents than the supposed one of Bede's
translation: had the Wycliffite versions been (as has been
suggested), really pre- Wycliffite and of recognised origin, they
could not have omitted to mention them. Arundel's prohibition
^ Printed pp. 439-45. ^ Prmted pp. 401-37.

IX] HIS INSTIGATION OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE 251

of 1408, again, mentioned no translation made in or since the
days of John Wydiffe, as a subject of exemption; had any well-
known translation existed besides that of Wycliffe, and had its
use been regarded as lawful, some reference must have been
made to it. Ecclesiastical writers who dealt with the subject of
the Lollards, and the ecclesiastical historians of the time, such
as Walden and Walsingham, knew nothing of the making of any
other translation. The complete absence of contemporary refer-
ence to any other version besides the Wyclififite one, when so
much was being written at the time on the subject of the lawful-
ness of biblical translations, renders it most unlikely on that
score alone that any other translation ever got into circulation.
The definite contemporary ascription of the origin of the trans-
lation to Wycliffe and his circle, coupled with the complete
absence of evidence that the translations were the work of any
one else, is in complete accordance with all the other evidence
on the subject. The making of such a work as the Wycliffite
translation was a scholastic achievement on quite a different
level from the one or two contemporary translations of separate
biblical books which were made about 1380-1400, possibly by
orthodox people : it is difficult to imagine that no evidence at all
on the matter would have survived, if the " Wycliffite " version
had been the work of a group of orthodox translators, other than
the Wycliffites, at Oxford. In view of the evidence of Lollard
authorship of these versions of the Bible, the possibility of
authorship by some orthodox but unknown scholar is beside
the point: but, even apart from this, there is too much evidence
as to the work of secular or religious scholars at the date, for
an achievement like the Wycliffite Bible to have passed un-
noticed; yet no catalogue or existent manuscript has ever
ascribed it to anj' such orthodox doctor.

CHAPTER X

The two versions of the WycUffite Bible, and the

evidence of the General Prologue as to the

aiithorship of the second version

§ I. The fourteenth century English Bible, as printed by
Forshall and Madden in 1850, has two versions, the second
closely dependent on the first ^. The first version is a careful,
literal translation of the Vulgate text, in which the order of the
English words follows almost exactly the order of the Latin, in
the manner of RoUe's psalter, and consequently often gives a
poor English translation. For "Dominum formidabunt adver-
sarii eius": "The Lord his adversaries shall dread," is a close
literal translation, which almost inverts the meaning. The
second version, while clearly dependent on the first, translates
more freely, without attempting to preserve the same order of
words. The differences of construction follow certain rules, but
the most noticeable difference is in the translation of the Latin
participles. The first version retains them, while the second
turns them into finite verbs; e.g.

(A) And he sente Petre and John, seyinge. Ye goynge make redy
pask to us. (B) And he sente Petre and Joon and seide, Go ye, and
make ye redi to us the pask^.

(A) And the breed takun, he dide thankingis. (B) And whanne
he hadde take breed, he dide thankyngis^.

One or other of these translations of the participles is followed
constantly throughout each of the versions; and this alone is
sufficient to distinguish them, apart from the other variations.

We possess the original manuscript of the first part of the
early version, the Old Testament as far as Baruch iii. 20, where
it is suddenly broken off and left incomplete'*. We have also a

^ Apart from small variants of the versions, of which Professor Craigie
kindly informs me that Bodl. 277 and C.C.C. Camb. 147, represent the most
important one.

- FM, IV. 220. 3 Id. 220.

* Bodl. 959.

CH. x] NICHOLAS Hereford's version 253

contemporary copy of it, which also breaks off at Baruch iii. 20,
and at the end of which the scribe has written: " Here ends the
translation of Nicholas Hereford'." The original manuscript is
in five different hands'^, so that it was probably made by five
different people, unless it was written down at dictation, each
scribe using his own dialectal forms. The chief of such differ-
ences is the difference in the present participle, where three out
of the five used the southern or Kentish "ing," and two the
midland " and " or " end " ; the first saying, for instance, " loving"
and the second "lufand" or "luvend^." It seems so unhkely
that a scribe writing at dictation should have consistently
changed a participle to his own dialectal form, writing "lufand"
every time "loving" was dictated to him, that it is on the whole
safer to discard the dictation theory, and accept the original
manuscript as having been the work of five different people.
The last of these five was the same man who finished the second
manuscript, the very one which ascribed the translation to
Nicholas Hereford : so that his evidence can be trusted. Whether
he meant to say that Hereford had been general!}' responsible
for the translation so far, or had been one of the five people who
had written it*, is not clear, but, taking the words at their face
meaning, it was the former. From Genesis to Baruch iii. 20 the
work was, he considered, the translation of Hereford, the most
violent of the early Lollards, and the most prominent in the
university after Wycliffe himself. Except for Purvey, Hereford

^ Douce, 369, part i. Explicit translationem [sic] Nicholay de Herfoi-d.
Most English surnames at the date were place-names, and nearly always
used with de. At this date the names were actual surnames of families,
and do not mean merely that a person of a given Christian name lived in
the given town: though the presumption would be that the family came
from the town originally. Hereford was of course a canon of Leicester.
For a reference to Hereford as a translator in 1393, see pp. 286-8.

- See FM, i. xlvii.

' The scribes' dialects appear to be: (i) Gen.-Exod.. southern, yspoken
andyng; (2) Levit.-Judges vii. 13 southern or Kentish, heo; (3) Judges vii.
13-II Paral. midland, ande and ende; (4) Ecclesiasticusi.-xlviii., southern;
(5) Ecclesiasticusxlviii. -Baruch iii. 20, midland, end. Forshall and Madden
unfortunately did not print from this original MS., which is corrected
throughout in another hand.

* He could not have meant that the last portion alone in Bodl. 959 or
Douce, 369, was Hereford's work, for these portions he had himself written;
Hereford would scarcely have started copying another MS. if he had been
at liberty to complete his own.

254 THE TWO VERSIONS OF THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE [CH.

persisted in his Lollardy the longest of the academic Lollards,
not recanting till some time between 1387 and 1391; the break
in the original manuscript must shew where his work was
interrupted in the summer of 1382, when he fled to Rome. The
second manuscript has a second part, where the Old Testament
and most of the New is completed by contemporary hands, in
the same method of translation. Thus the first version was the
work of the Wycliffite circle at Oxford, Nicholas Hereford
played a prominent part in its making, and some members of the
Wycliffite circle finished it. It would seem probable, under the
circumstances, that Wychffe's secretary, Purvey, should have
been aware of the course of the work from the beginning, should
have been one of the five subordinate translators of the early por-
tion, and should have shared in the completion of the later. As a
young man of about thirty in 1382, he might well have worked
under Hereford, who was of higher standing in the university,
and therefore more likely to be entrusted by Wychffe with the
general responsibility of making the translation: but, when
Hereford fled the country, it would seem likely that the re-
sponsibility of completing the translation would have relapsed
to the man who had instigated it, and to the young doctor who
lived with him and "drank in his most secret teaching^."

As regards the literalness of this early version of the Wycliffite
Bible, prefaces to contemporary translations shew that it was
not yet decided whether it was permissible to translate from the
Latin in any other way, especially when such grave issues hung
upon the translation of every word as in the case of holy scrip-
ture. Rolle had translated in this way, and his work was the
strongest precedent: and a contemporary but uncopied trans-
lation of the gospels into north midland adopted the same style
of translation. Moreover, there may have been an intention
from the first to translate glosses as well as the text ; and, since
glosses were made on every word, a Uteral translation would
have to be made if such translated glosses were to be of any use.
Most elaborate glosses were, as a matter of fact, translated in

^ If the second part of Douce, 369, be found to represent the earhest form
of the completion of the early version, there is no dialectal reason against
its having been completed by Purvey, since the dialect is southern, and
generally similar to that of the General Prologue and Purvey 's other tracts:
see p. 275 n.

Xj THE GENERAL PROLOGUE 255

connexion with the gospels of this version, and it is Hkely that
the glossed gospels were at least contemplated when this early
version was made, since this would have been so thoroughly in
accordance with ordinary mediaeval sentiment on the matter.
The fact that Rolle's, the only oiblical translation yet made, had
been literal, and the probabihty that the issue of glosses was
contemplated from the first, explains the literalness of the trans-
lation of this version.

§ 2. The second version of the Wycliffite Bible, like the
earlier, has many short English prologues to the translations of
the several books, most of which are merely translations of
prologues in the Vulgate^, while others are the work of the
English translator-, and summarise the contents of the book, or
declare the aim and method of the translator. None of these
short prologues are, however, heretical. It has also a long "pro-
logue for all the books of the Bible of the Old Testament," called
by Forshall and Madden, and frequently by later writers, the
General Prologue ^. This is a long tract in fifteen chapters, which
occupies sixty of the large quarto pages of Forshall and Madden's
edition, and begins "Five and twenty books of the Old Testa-
ment been books of faith, and fully books of holy writ." It is
written to incite all men, princes, secular lords, justices and
"men of simple wit" to the reading of "Goddis lawe" and the
Old Testament in particular, and not to spare for any tribulation
or persecution which their enemies may do to them on that
account. The author points out again and again that reading
the Old Testament is useful to all men^ (a new enough pro-

^ Both S. Jerome's prologues, and the old Latin are;umenta which are
thought to be earlier than S. Jerome. For an analysis and comparison of
these prologues in the Wycliffite Bible with their Latin originals, see
Test. Scots, notes on the pro'ogues of the N. Test.

* FM, I. xxix.

3 Printed FM, r. 1-60: described id. i. xxviii, xxxiv. It was printed as a
separate tract in the sixteenth century, but not, like the Compendious
Old Treatise, as a part of the propaganda for the spread of Tindale's New
Testament in England (see p. 438). It was printed as the Door of holy
Scripture, by J. Gough, in Lombard Street, 1540; and as The true copy of
a prologue written about CC years ago by John Wycliffe,. . .the original
whereof is found written in an old English Bible betwixt the old testament
and the new, which Bible remaineth now within the king his majesty's Chamber.
Robert Crowley, 1550.

* " Simple men of wit may be edified much to heavenly living by reading
and knowing of the Old Testament," FM, i. 3; the third book of Kings

-7

256 THE TWO VERSIONS OF THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE [CH.

position in the fourteenth century) ; since it encourages them
with the examples of those who were persecuted for righteous-
ness' sake^. The General Prologue is not a translation, but is
meant, apart from its propagandist aim, to supply an English
equivalent to the famous Prologus Galeatus of the Vulgate, and
other prologues of S. Jerome. It begins with a statement
as to the canonical books of the Old Testament, passes on to
a passage reassuring "men of simple wit" that the Bible
is not too high and lofty a book for them to read, and gives
at some length summaries of the contents of all the books
of the Old Testament with the lessons to be drawn from them.
It then passes to a long discussion of the old fourfold inter-
pretation of scripture, and ends with a chapter justifying the
translation of scripture, describing the riiethod followed in
the author's own translation of the Bible, and ending with
the familiar note of encouragement against persecution. The
General Prologue was thus both a scholarly introduction, and
a polemical Lollard pamphlet.

The General Prologue was written probably somewhat later

should "stir kings and lords to. . .take council of holy scripture and true
prophets, and not to false prophets, be they never so many, and cry fast
against one either few true men," 15; i and 11 Chronicles should "stir
Christian kings and lords to... make God's law to be known and kept
of their people," 29.

1 The book of Tobias is singled out for special praise for this significant
reason: "Though the book of Tobias is not of belief, it is a full devout
story, and profitable to the simple people, to make them keep patience
and God's hests, . . . therefore among all the books of the Old Testament,
simple men of wit should read and hear oft this book of Tobias, to be
true to God in prosperity and adversity, and. . .to be patient in tribulation;
and go never away from the dread and love of God," id. 35. The Song of
Songs (of all unlikely lessons), is "to teach men to set all their heart in
the love of God and of their neighbours, and to do all their business to
bring men to charity and salvation, by good example and true preaching,
and wilful suffering of pain and death, if need be," 40. i\Jaccabees "should
stir Christian men to hold God's law to life and death: and if knights
should use the sword against any cursed men, they should use it against
lords and priests principally, that will compel men, for dread of prison
and death, to forsake the truth and freedom of Christ's gospel: but God
of His great mercy give very repentance to them that thus pursue true
men, and grant patience, meekness and charity to them that been thus
pursued," 43. "For God's love, ye simple men. . .answer ye meekly and
prudently to enemies of God's law. . .and hold ye steadfastly to life and
death the truth and freedom of the holy gospel of Christ Jesus, and take
ye meekly men's sayings and laws, only inasmuch as they accord with
holy writ and good conscience, and no further, for life nor for death," 49.

X] THE GENERAL PROLOGUE DATED 1 395 257

than the second version itself, or at least some years after it had
first been taken in hand; and on the dating of the General Pro-
logue hangs the main reason for deciding its authorship, and
that of the second version. It has, among other less definite
allusions to contemporary events 1, a reference to certain evil
conditions resulting from the celibacy of the clergy, as made
known at the "last parliament." The passage is so explicit ^ as
to admit of no doubt that the reference is to the Twelve Con-
clusions of the Lollards^, which were "presented to the assembled
parliament of the kingdom of England" in the year 1395. This
Lollard petition refers to this evil result of celibacy in its third
"conclusion," and explains in its last one that the matters here
mentioned are set forth at large in another English book; this
"other book," which we also possess, refers to the same specific
evil. The presentation of this Lollard petition was a turning
point in their history ^ and roused the greatest anxiety, not only
on the part of the clergy, but of Richard II himself. The refer-
ence in the General Prologue is so explicit as to leave no reason
for belief that any earlier or later attack of the Lollards, on the
clergy in parliament can be referred to. The General Prologue
was therefore written after the parliament of Jan.-Feb. 1395,
and before the next one of Jan.-Feb. 1397. This is in accordance

^ FM, I. 51: 'But alas, alas, alas, the most abomination that ever was
heard among Christian clerks is now purposed in England,. . .in the chief
university of our realm, as many true men tell with great wailing;. . .that
no man shall learn divinity, neither holy writ, no but he that hath done
his fourme in art ; . . . this would be nine year or ten before that he
learn holy writ, after that he can commonly well his grammar." This
reference to some intended effort to enforce an existing statute, as an
anti-Lollard measure, is hardly precise Enough to date the tract exactly.
For the difficulties over this same point in 13 10, and at other times, when
the friars were anxious for dispensation from it, see p. 162; for an attempt
to revive it in 1387, FM, i. xxiii. There is also a reference to some brawl
at Oxford, "slaying of quick men," which has been interpreted as referring
to a fight between northern and southern scholars in 1389, see ibid. But
these references to unimportant events at Oxford, — the first of which was
very probably a "purpose" of the anti-Lollard party there for several
years, and the second of which might refer to any brawl, are not of the
same value as the reference to the important and well known Lollard
petition of 1395.

^ FM, I. 51: "the second horrible sin is sodomy and strong maintenance
thereof, as it is known to many persons of the realm, and at the last
parliament," with more on the same subject.

* See appendix. Twelve Conclusions, p. 37^.

* Trevelyan, 329: "It was the high water mark of Lollardry."

D. w.B. 17

258 THE TWO VERSIONS OF THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE [CH.

with the evidence as to the date of the second version of the
Bible, with which the General Prologue is connected: no manu-
script can be dated with certainty as before 1395, but one is
dated as written in 1397, and others are of about that date^.
It is not Hkely that the second version was the work of a single
year, and it may have been the work of many years : but it was
probably complete when the General Prologue was finished, be-
tween Feb. 1395 and Feb. 1397.

The last chapter of the General Prologue deals with the need
of having the Bible in the vernacular for the use of simple men,
and gives an account of the making of the second version, in a
passage which throws some light also on the making of the early
version, to which it incidentally refers. The writer begins the
chapter by giving scriptural reasons for the spreading of the
knowledge of holy writ among all people :

For though covetous clerks be wooed by simony, heresy, and many
other sins to dispise and stop holy writ, as much as they may: yet
the lewid people crieth after holy writ, to con it and keep it, with
great cost and peril of their life.

For these reasons and other, with common charity to save all
men in our realm, which God would have saved, a simple creature ^
hath translated the Bible out of Latin into English. First, this simple
creature had much travail, with divers fellows and helpers, to gather
many old Bibles, and other doctors, and common glosses, and to
make one Latin Bible some deal true; and then to study it of the
new, the text with the gloss, and other doctors, as he might get, and
specially Lyra on the Old Testament, that helped full much in this
work ; the third time to counsel with old grammarians and old divines,
of hard words, and hard sentences, how they might best be under-
stood, and translated; the fourth time to translate as clearly as he
could to the sentence, and to have many good fellows and cunning
at the correcting of the translation. First, it is to know, that the
best translating is out of Latin into English, to translate after the
sentence [meaning], and not only after the words, so that the sen-
tence be as open, or opener, in English as in Latin, and go not far
from the letter; and if the letter may not be sued in the translating,
let the sentence ever be whole and open, for the words ought to
serve to the intent and sentence, and else the words be superfluous
or false.. . .At the beginning I purposed, with God's help, to make
the sentence as true and open in English as it is in the Latin, or
more true and more open than it is in the Latin; and I pray, for
charity and for common profit of Christian souls, that if any wise

* See p. 381. 2 gee p^ 276 for this pseudonymic phrase.

X] CONTENTS OF GENERAL PROLOGUE 259

man find any default of the truth of translation, let him set in the
true sentence and open of holy writ, but look that he examine truly
his Latin Bible, for no doubt he shall find full many Bibles in Latin
full false, if he look, namely, many new; and the common Latin
Bibles have more need to be corrected, as many as I have seen in
my life, than hath the English Bible late translated. . . . And whether I
have translated as openly or openlier in English as in Latin, let wise
men deem, that know well both languages, and know well the sen-
tence of holy scripture. And whether I have done this or nay, no
doubt they that con well the scripture of holy writ and English
together, and will travail, with God's grace, thereabouts, may make
the Bible as true and open, yea and openlier in English than it is in
Latin ^.

The writer then goes on to explain at length the manner in

which he prefers to translate Latin constructions, and the care

necessary for the translation of "equivocal words," or those

v/ith double meaning. He goes into these questions in great

detail, and emphasises the need of the advice and help of " many

fellows" in such a work, explaining that he had had such help

at every stage in his translation. He mentions a little later in

the chapter that it was common knowledge to his enemies that

several others had helped in the translation:

"Let the Church of England now approve," he said, "the transla-
tion of simple men, that would for no good on earth, by their witting
and power, put away the least truth, yea, the least letter or tittle
of holy writ. ... If they know any default by the translators, or
helpers of them, let them blame the default by charity and mercy. . . .
Yet worldly clerks ask greatly, what spirit maketh idiots hardy to
translate now the Bible into English, since the four great doctors
durst never do this^?"

Nevertheless, when he is relating the different processes of
making the translation, the writer speaks in the singular through-
out : a natural enough record of a piece of work done by a circle
of translators, under the leadership of one man. The method
was probably the same in the making of "the English Bible late
translated," which could have been none other than the one this
translator used in making his second version, the work of
Nicholas Hereford. That too, to judge from the five hands of the
original manuscript, seems to have been the work of "many
good fellows and cunning."

1 FM, I. 57-8.

" FM, I. 59: idiots, of course, is here used in the common mediaeval
sense of unlearned folk.

17 — 2

26o THE TWO VERSIONS OF THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE [CH.

The emphasis the writer of the prologue lays upon the four
stages in which he has made his translation, and particularly in
the making of his Latin text, suggests whether his account
is actually that of the making of both versions, including
Nicholas Hereford's and his own: since such elaborate pre-
parations seem uncalled for if the translator were actually going
only to "make open" an existing English text. "The English
Bible late translated" would be a possible reference to his own
work^, if the General Prologue were written some time after the
finishing of most of the translation. But the third stage of the
translation, as described by the writer, seems to have been only
a seeking of advice from old books and doctors about the trans-
lation of difficult words, and not a literal translation of the whole
Bible. The fourth stage is, of course, the making of a free trans-
lation. Moreover, the second version shews that its translator
had not merely relied upon the Latin text of his predecessor,
but in places used a different one. There are, moreover, no
manuscripts of the second version earlier than 1395, the date
when the General Prologue was written : yet this might have been
expected, had the second version been in existence some years
earlier ("the English Bible late translated"). It seems then
certain that the writer of the General Prologue refers only to the
making of the second version, and that he made it, using the
earlier one, with the express purpose of converting a "construe "
of the Vulgate into intelligible English prose.

§ 3. Two preliminary steps are necessary before determining
the authorship of the second version of the Wyclifhte Bible. We
must shew (i) the connexion of the General Prologue with the
two versions (that is, that the Bible as printed by Forshall
and Madden is the one referred to in the General Prologue) : and
(2) that the General Prologue is the work of a single author, and
not a glossed or conflate tract.

The reasons for supposing that the General Prologue alludes to
these particular translations are three. The first is that the
General Prologue is found in connexion with these translations in
the manuscripts, and not in connexion with any other work.
The manuscripts of the General Prologue are much fewer than

^ In which, in that case, Nicholas Hereford would have been a helper
and fellow translator.

X] AUTHORSHIP OF GENERAL PROLOGUE 261

those of the translations of the text: partly because the manu-
scripts of English Bibles seldom contained the whole Bible, and
the General Prologue was not necessary for completeness' sake*:
partly because the General Prologue was frankly heretical, and
would have involved the burning of the Bible if found upon a
LoUard: and partly because some of the late fifteenth century
manuscripts were no doubt written for orthodox people, prob-
ably nuns, in which cases the scribe would not have copied the
prologue. Forshall and Madden collated 170 manuscripts of the
Wyclilhte Bible, and others have been discovered since: but
they collated only ten manuscripts of the General Prologue. All
these ten manuscripts have the General Prologue in connexion
with the second Wyclifhte version, except in one case where the
General Prologue itself forms the whole manuscript^. In three
cases it is found with the complete Bible in the second version ^
in another this complete Bible contained it originally*; it is
found once with the Old Testament only^ once with the New^
once with the Old Testament but split up in portions before the
books it describes', once as a small paragraph only, prefixed to
a psalter^, once as the first chapter only, in the manuscript made
for Henry VP. Here the scribe completed the first chapter,
which contains heretical matter at the end, but omitted the rest
for obvious reasons. Certainly any manuscripts which may have
been made originally for orthodox people in the fifteenth century
would have omitted it also. Thus, though the manuscripts are
few, their rarity is easily understandable, and there is no manu-
script evidence at all for supposing that this prologue relates to
any other translations than those printed by Forshall and
Madden.

' MSS. of the whole Bible are comparatively rare, because such books
were so large and valuable. MSS. of the New Testament, or part of it,
are very much more frequent than the Old Testament, to which the
General Prologue belongs.

^ Karl. 1666; in Univ. G. 3, also, it is found as a separate tract, though
combined with certain tables, genealogies, and excerpts from the N. Test,
in the later Wyclififite version.

3 C.C.C. Camb. 147, Dublin A. i. 10, Acland MS.

* Claudius E. 11. s Mm. 2. 15. « Kk. i. 8.

' Line. Coll. Arch. 15: the scribe has arranged it in imitation of Jerome's
separate prologues.

* Addit. 10,046: copied from Dublin A. r. 10: other parts are in Wore,
cath. F. 172. * Bodl. 277.

262 THE TWO VERSIONS OF THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE [CH.

The second reason for believing that the author of the General
Prologue describes the making of the second version, as printed,
and refers to the first version as "the Enghsh Bible late trans-
lated," is that the second of these corresponds exactly to his
aim, of a "translation according to the sentence"; and the first
to one made "according to the letter." It is easily understand-
able why a translation made in 1384, more or less according to
orthodox precedent in its literal method of translation^, should
have been found inadequate by the Lollard leaders within a f6w
years. In 1382, when the first version was in the making, they
had aimed at supplying a book for knights and lords, possibly
in most cases with glosses: but, when their aim gradually became
democratised, they desired that the most "simple and lewid"
should learn their English gospels by heart: and for such a
purpose the literal version was thoroughly unsuitable. Lollard
preachers in the early days had generally made free translations
of biblical verses in their sermons, and it was now seen to be
desirable to have such an "open" translation in a written ver-
sion. The translator says it was his special aim to produce such
a version, referring to another existent one which apparently did
not meet the case : and the two versions in Forshall and Madden
exactly correspond to the situation thus indicated.

The third reason for identifying them, is the close correspon-
dence in the construction of the sentences of the later version
with the method of translating described by the author of the
General Prologue. That this was a matter of debate at Oxford
at the time is seen by the treatises of two friars, who argued that
the "figures," or grammatical constructions of Latin, could not
be adequately rendered into English without violation of the
sense, or vice versa. First and foremost, the author states that
he does not mean to translate the present participle literally,
but to turn it into a finite verb. Also, he inverts the order of the
Latin words where the English construction demands it ; and he
has taken especial care with words of double meaning, to give
the sense of the original writer. This and some other details he

* The literal construction is very similar also in the midland gloss on
S. Matthew, particularly in the translation of the Latin present participle:
li. 2.12, Haec eo cogitante, ecce angehis domini in soninis apparnit ei dicens,
Joseph : Bot })ise })ings hym J)inkand : lo ane angel of Go<! apperid to him
in sleep seyand, Joseph.

X] THE GENERAL PROLOGUE NOT CONFLATE 263

explains with examples ^i and in all cases the second version is
translated according to his methods, and his examples appear to
be taken from it. These three reasons therefore, the conjunction
of this version with the General Prologue in the manuscripts, the
correspondence of the two versions to the two mentioned in the
General Prologue, and the close correspondence between the
methods of translation of the second and those described in the
General Prologue, render it certain that the author of that work
was the translator of the second version.

It is thus clear that the translations printed by Forshall and
Madden are those described by the author of the General Pro-
logue: hut, since the description occurs in one chapter of the
fifteen of the General Prologue, it might be questioned whether the
prologue was originally written as it stands. The part describing
the translation is obviously the work of a careful scholar, with
a great zeal for accurate translation: is there any reason to
suppose that the distinctively Lollard passages earher in the
prologue are not his, but were inserted later, as for instance
the Lollard passages in the version of Rolle's psalter? Internal
evidence shews however that the prologue is not a glossed or
conflate work^. The evidence of the manuscripts is against such
a supposition: there is no different version of the General Pro-
logue, the final chapter with the description of the translation
does not occur separately, and the only part which does ever
appear separately is the first chapter, in the manuscript pre-
sented by Henry VI to the London Charterhouse^. Further, the
thought and structure of the General Prologue is continuous and
orderly, and the only digression is explained by the text itself.
The General Prologue begins by explaining which biblical books
are canonical, and in a single sentence it then passes from ex-

1 FM, I. 57-60.

2 The prologue to Rolle's psalter has been tacked on to the end of the
Gen. Prol. in Trin. Dublin 2. i. 10: but there is no other evidence in the
MSS. of any accretion to the original text.

' FM, I. xlvii. The chapter ends by exhorting simple men to study
the Old Testament, and stating that "pride and covetise of clerks is cause
of their blindness and heresy, and depriveth them from very understanding
of holy writ," — a sentiment of sufficiently Lollard flavour to make an
orthodox scribe refrain from copying further. Another MS., Harl. 1666,
ends imperfect'y in the final chapter, but as the end comes in the middle
of a sentence, it seems to be merely an unfinished copy.

V »-*

264 THE TWO VERSIONS OF THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE [CH.

plaining that all the books of the New Testament are canonical,
and therefore to be studied by " Christian men and women, old
and youngi," to explaining that they may study the dark parts
of holy writ as well as the open, for the same meaning is in both.
"Therefore no simple man of wit be afeared unmeasurably to
study in the text of holy writ." There is no gap here between the
technical and scholarly definition of the canonical books, and
the exhortation for all classes to study all parts of the Bible,
which is frankly Lollard: and the same is true throughout the
prologue. It continues with a division of Old Testament matter
into moral, legal and ceremonial, and continues with a short de-
scription of the contents of each book of the Old Testament^
and Apocrypha, written with the idea of upholding certain
Lollard doctrines, and exhorting to steadfastness under perse-
cution. Thus, the book of Chronicles should be specially studied
by Christian kings and princes, that they may learn by the
example of evil princes and their punishment, and of good
princes who "governed well the people in 'Goddis Lawe.'"

But alas, alas, alas, where king Jozophat sent his princes and
deacons and priests to each city of his realm with the book of God's
law, to teach openly God's law to the people, some Christian lords
send general letters to all their ministers and liegemen or tenants,
that the pardons of the bishops of Rome, that been open leesings ... be
preached generally in their realms and lordships, and if any wise man
againsayeth the open errors of antichrist, ... he be prisoned, as a
man out of Christian belief, and traitor of God and of Christian kings
and lords.

Hezekiah busied himself in cleansing the house of God : but some
Christian lords now defile it, by supporting simonient clerks full
of covetousness, heresy and hypocrisy, "to stop God's law, that
it be not known and kept and freely preached." Similar morals
against idolatry and simony are drawn from the stories of Ahab,
Manasseh, etc., so that all this portion^ serves both as a summary
of the contents of the books, and an application of the moral of
the stories against the persecutors of the Lollards.

"But it is to wit " (the writer continues without break, after
finishing this description), "that holy scripture hath four

1 FM, I. 2.

2 Chapters in. to xi., inclusive, out of the fifteen of the whole work.
'' FM, I. 3-43.

X] ANALYSIS OF GENERAL PROLOGUE 265

understandings: literal, allegoric, moral and anagogic," and
these he explains at length, quoting a sermon of S. Augus-
tine and the seven rules of Ticonius^ for the understanding of
scripture.

"Austin writeth all this in the third book of Christian Teaching,"
he proceeds, " Isidore in the first book of Sovereign Good toucheth
these rules shorther, but I have him not now; and Lyra, in the be-
ginning of the Bible, toucheth more openly these rules, but I have
him not now; and Armachan in the beginning of his book de Quaes-
tionibus Armenorum giveth many good grounds to understand holy
scripture to the letter, and ghostly understanding also: but I have
him not now."

This lack of books explains the digression which follows, which
according to the purpose of the author is little more than pad-
ding, but which enables us to fix the date at which the prologue
was written.

" Also, no thing may seem to be wiser, no thing of more eloquence,
than is holy scripture," he continues; "...but for God's love, ye
simple men, beware of pride, and vain jangling and chiding in words
against proud clerks of school and vain religious, and answer ye
meekly and prudently to enemies of God's law."

Holy living, he says, is needful for the understanding of holy
writ: but now no man may learn divinity at the university till
he has been regent in arts for two years, or studied nine or ten
years at the university beforehand^: and horrible practices are
to be found among clerks at Oxford, "as is known to many
persons of the realm, and at the last parliament^" These words
refer to the petition the Lollards presented to parliament in
1395*, which made a great stir. That this whole digression was
due to lack of books, and was not a later gloss, is shewn by the
sentence with which it was suddenly ended;

Nathless, for Lyra came [of] late to me, see what he saith of the
understanding of holy scripture: he writeth thus on the second pro-
logue on the Bible^,

1 FM, I. 46. 2 Id. I. 51. ' Id. I. 51; see infra, p. 374.

* See pp. 375-6.

5 The writer here translates a passage from Lyra's first prologue on the
Bible and the whole of the second, as in the 1634, Antwerp, edition of
Lyra's gloss. This long passage, from cap. xiii. p. 52, "John saith in the
fifth chapter of the Apoc," to cap. xiv. p. 55, "Here Lyra rehearseth the
sentence of S. Austin and of Isidore in these rules," is merely a translation
of Lyra.

266 THE TWO VERSIONS OF THE WYCLIFFITE BIBLE [CH.

and he proceeds to quote the whole of Lyra's long prologue.
Having now summarised the contents of the biblical books and
devoted much space to the explanation of the four under-
standings of scripture, he finishes in the last chapter by asserting
that it is lawful for the common people to have holy writ, gives
the above-mentioned rules for translating different grammatical
constructions, and ends on the familiar note of exhortation to
patience under persecution. "God grant us all grace to kunne
well and keep well holy writ, and suffer joyfully some pain for
it at the last."

The General Prologue is thus a whole, whose one digression is
due to the writer's temporary lack of the books he wished to
quote, and which he terminated immediately on receipt of those
books ; there are no grounds from its internal structure for con-
sidering it a glossed or conflate work.

§ 4. It is thus clear that but one person wrote the General
Prologue, and that he edited also the second version of the
Wycliffite Bible. This person was Wycliffe's secretary and
literary executor, the leader of the remnant of his sect, the
"eximius doctor" John Purvey. For this, the comparison of the
General Prologue with other documents and data affords sufficient
evidence^. The General Prologue was written by a scholar of
undoubted eminence: by a Lollard: and by a persecuted
Lollard: and it was finished in 1395. Sufficient is known of all
the Lollards to say with certainty that there was no other
Lollard doctor or scholar holding out in 1395 except Purvey
himself: they had all recanted earlier, and the date of their re-
cantation is known. Moreover, the General Prologue is but one
of a series of tracts ^ written in the years about 1387 by Purvey,
and these tracts or prologues have a forerunner in a chapter
dealing with translations, inserted by Purvey when he translated
Wycliffe's De Officio Pastorali. There is also evidence that the
Thirty Seven Conclusions is substantially the work of Purvey:
and it has so many passages in common with the General Pro-
logue that a common authorship is strongly suggested. There are
other minor points : and the cumulative evidence leaves no room

^ See appendix, p. 376, The identification of the author of the General
Prologue with John Purvey.
* See p. 270.

X] PURVEY THE AUTHOR 267

for doubt of Purvey's authorship. Contemporaries who identified
his secretary's work with Wydiffe's were justified in beUeving
that "master John Wychffe" translated the whole Bible, as
Hus said they did ; and the probability is that Arundel, when he
prohibited the use of translations "made in the time of the late
master John Wycliffe, or since," knew well enough that he was
condemning the second version and the glossed gospels made by
John Purvey^.

^ For Arundel's examination of Purvey's glossed gospels, see p. 279;
for his presence at Purvey's trial in 1401, see pp. 284-5 ; for his unsuccessful
attempt to conciliate this eminent scholar by giving him a benefice, p. 289.

CHAPTER XI

The controversy about the English Bible 1384-1408,
and the constitutions of 1408

§ I. From 1378 when Wycliffe, writing the De Veritate, wa^
declaring that it was the duty of all Christians to be acquaintec
with the bibhcal text, till 1408 when Arundel prohibited trans
lations made in his days or later, controversy went on over the
lawfulness of translating the text of the Vulgate into the mothei
tongue. During the whole period the friars were the leaders ol
the opposition ; and, since they were the recognised authorities on
biblical study at the universities, and the only lecturers on the
biblical text, their opposition carried much weight. The English
version of Wycliffe's De Officio Pastorali, probably the work of
Purvey^, complained that the friars were the chief enemies of
English Bibles: and at the other end of the period we find them
bringin? their campaign to a successful issue at Oxford. The
use of bibhcal translations was not, hke some of the Lollard
practices, heretical on the face of it: and it is quite possible that
the attitude of the bishops may have been less antagonistic at
first than that of the friars^ It was an eminent friar who claimed
in 1401 that severer measures ought to be taken to enforce the
existing custom by which "our enthroned bishops refuse the
reading of the Bible to the simple ^"

We possess an English tract which is the first in this contro-
versy: from its contents, it must have been written about the
same time as the De Veritate, and probably by W'yclifi'e himself.
It begins The holy prophet Dmvid saith*, is written by a Lollard,
and is a scholarly and somewhat academic tract, full of citations
from the Bible and the fathers: the biblical texts quoted are not
taken from either of the Lollard \-ersions. but are apparently
translated at sight, as in the English N-ersions of Wycliffe s ser-

* Cf. Arundel s • m t,xvJ4 but Wvcl.-e >:-i:-v. -.r. :'-;• .V Etrmmg.
that bishops «is «-c-. ..- •-< "fnr hostile?. *<>? ti i:i ^:."

• S<w jk 4v>S- • Print*cL pf»- 445-56^

CH.XI] LOLLARD APOLOGETICS 269

mons^. The emphasis in the tract is on the combination of the
study of the Bible with a poor and holy Ufe: it repeatedly
exhorts the simple to acquaint themselves with God's law, and '
speaks of the opposition of proud clerks to their doing so. It is
almost certainly Wychffe's own work^, because of the earhness
of its date, and the similarity of its hterary style and contents
to those of the De Veritate ; for the simplest person, it says, should
be acquainted with the Bible, though it nowhere refers to biblical
translations, — a fact which dates it as written c. 1378-80. The
Bible, it says, should be studied:

only to edifying of thyself or thy neighbour. Some men will con for
that end only that they con, and it is foul curiosity. And some
men will con that they be known, and it is a foul vanity; and some
men wiU con, for to sell their cunning for money, or for honours,
and it is foul winning. . . . Christian men wonder much on the way-
wardness of divers clerks, that boasten that they have passingly the
cunning of holy writ, ... for they feign to study, con and preach holy
writ for pride of the word, for covetise of earthly goods, and for
womb-joy, to live in deUces, bodily ease, and idleness. .. .Such is
scripture to a man not willing to live after God : as if any man ex-
pounded learning of battle to an earth-tiller, not having will for to
fight'.

The writer then gives a series of numbered steps, which it
behoves all men to take: to pray devoutly for a true under-
standing of the text of holy writ, to do penance that God should
grant them this understanding, to beheve that His law is true,
to enquire meekly of learned and well-hving men the true under-
standing of holy writ, and finally to

read busily the text of the New Testament, and take they en-
sample of the holy life of Christ, and of His apostles, and trust they
fully to the goodness of the Holy Ghost, which is special teacher of

well-willed men They should see and study the true and open

exposition of holy doctors, and other wise men, as they may easily

» See pp. 249, 445.

* It might be a translation of some Latin work of Wycliffe's, now lost:
bat it is unlikely to be Purv-ey's translation, judging by a comparison of
its literary- st>ie with that of Pur\-ey's other work, and his EngUsh gloss
of the De Officio Pastorali ; and from the fact that Purvey did write a series
of tracts in defence of translations, in which it is not included.

» See p. 448. The passage which is closest to Wychffe's argument in
the De Vent, (for which cf. supra), is that beginning: "These heretics
say cursedly that God is false, and His law is false ... the true understanding
thereof," p. 450.

270 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

see as goodly come thereto. Let Christian men travail faithfully in
these six ways, and be not too much af eared of objections of enemies,
saying that "the letter slayeth."

The writer then gives a long exposition of what the text, " the
letter slayeth," actually means, answers two other objections to
the reading of the text of God's law^, and concludes:

Therefore, notwithstanding these lewid objections, as Christ
stretched forth His arms and His hands to be nailed on the cross, . . .
so all Christian people should stretch forth their arms and hands and
all their members to embrace to themselves the law of God.

The points in favour of Wycliffe's authorship, besides the
earliness of the date and resemblance in literary style, are the
similarity of outlook to that of the De Veritate, the fact that the
writer deals at length with the argument that "holy scripture is
false," which belongs to the quite early stage of the biblical con-
troversy 2 but is not found later, and the improbability that it is
a work of Purvey's, — the next most likely conjectural author.
The main aim of the De Veritate is to disprove the assertion " that
holy scripture is false," because it is discordant in parts, and
this tract is largely taken up with the same point : but the effect
of the De Veritate seems to have been so great that the objection
was not brought forward later. The tract is found in the manu-
script in the closest connexion with three other Lollard treatises,
the work of Nicholas Hereford or one of the circle of translators
of the first Lollard version^

Besides this early tract, and the chapter speaking of the law-
fulness of the English translations inserted in the English De
Officio Pastorali, we have a series of twelve English sermons or
tracts* by Purvey, defending English Bibles. These must have
been written between the years 1382 and 1395: for the first
recommends the reading of epistles and gospels, "with ex-
position,"— an early Lollard demand, probably made before the

1 First, "that lewid men should not intermit of holy writ," because
God commanded that only Moses and Aaron should go up into the mount,
which signifies holy writ; second, that "since Osa the deacon was slain
for putting his hand to the ark, lewid men should not touch holy writ."

2 See pp. 243-5. ^ See infra, p. 445.

* li. 6. 26, flE. 1-158, and 2 other MSS. The tracts are written in a coarse
upright hand, in a MS. 6" x 4^", which contains also the Lollard translation
of the Elucidarium. Tract 11 is printed in FM, i. xiv-xv. The whole series,
though very interesting, is too long to print in an appendix.

XI] purvey's apologetics 271

early version was complete; — and it is improbable that the
tracts were written later than the General Prologue, which in-
corporates one of them, and was a long and sufficient apologia
for the time being. The tenth tract is in fact the greater part of
Purvey's epilogue to his gloss on S. Matthew, copied without the
special explanation of Purvey's authorities, and how he had
dealt with Aquinas' gloss, in making his own English one^.
There is some reason to date this gloss as earlier than 1387^:
and if the twelve sermons were written in the order in which
they were copied into this manuscript ^ and the tenth were
written before 1387, this would date the whole series as probably
written between 1382 and 1390. That is, the series would be
roughly contemporary with Trevisa's passage on biblical trans-
lations, written in 1387. The preoccupation with the defence of

^ The original form of the tract is the epilogue on Matthew, printed
p. 457. li. 6. 26, p. 98, begins: Adere God, lord of truth. . .fro J^e bigynnynge
of pe world unto ))is tyme: printed pp. 460-1, with the variants from this MS.,
which are usually slight verbal expansions, see notes on p. 460. The
scribe of li. 6. 26, writing c. 1400-1430, copied a MS. in which the arrange-
ment was the same, with tract x following tract ix without break or
rubrication. This tract (x) is so conspicuously similar in matter and style
to the others of the series, that there are no grounds for supposing it a
solitary work of Purvey's, inserted into an alien collection of sermons.

^ The epilogue to the gloss on Luke was written in 1387 (see p. 275):
that on Matthew perhaps earlier.

^ This seems probable, because the references to English translations
as made become successively more definite in the later tracts. An additional
reason for attributing the series to Purvey, is that no one but a Lollard
himself engaged on the work of translation over a number of years would
have written so long a series of tracts on the same subject: the defence
of English scriptures was certainly not one of the usual Lollard theses,
specially before 1408. The biblical quotations are not those of either
Lollard version: but the tracts were issued while Purvey was engaged on
the glossed gospels, and probably before he had turned to the making of the
second version, c. 1390-5. The early version was unsuitable for quotation
in popular sermons: the translations here are often loose, and sometimes
interrupted by the writer's own interpretations. For the mode of transla-
tion, of. p. 43.

li. 6. 26, p. 9. GoiK sei)) he, al aboute pe world, and preche \>e gospel
to euery criature.

EV ^e goynge in to al the world, preche the gospel to ech creature.

LV Go 3e in to al the world and preche the gospel to eche creature.

li. 6. 26, p. 18. :^euel) not pe holy gospel to houndis, ne castit> not your
margarites a forn \>e swyn.

EV Nyl 3e 3eue holy thing to houndis, nether sende 36 your margaritis
before swyne.

LV Nyle 3e 3yue hooli thing to houndis, nethir caste 30 30ure margaritis
bifore swyne.

272 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

translations is evidence that the writer was himself engaged in
making them for several years: and, even without the connexion
of one tract with Purvey, it would be difficult to ascribe them to
any translator but him. Nicholas Hereford was still a Lollard
at the period of their issue: but from 1382-87 he was either on
the continent or imprisoned by the archbishop.
The first tract begins:

AU Christian people stand in three manner of folk. Some can read
and understand, as good clerks and well lettered men : and for them
be ordained books of Hebrew, of Greek, and of Latin. Some can
neither read ne understand, as lewid people that kunnen no letter, . . .
Some there be that kunnen read but little, or nought understand,
and for them be ordained books of their mother tongue, to French
men books of French, to Italians books of Latin corrupt, to Dutch
men books Dutch, to Englishmen books of English: in which books
they may read to kunne God and His law.. . .And that it is lawful
to Christian people to read and kunnen holy scripture, ... it is open
in many places of God's law, both old and new^.

The comparative earliness of this tract is shewn by its recom-
mendation only of the reading of the gospels and epistles, and
even those with glosses. The author does not contend for the
reading of the whole Bible, or the naked text, or the Old Testa-
ment, which were later Lollard demands.

But if the ten commandments, the creed, pater noster and ave,
that all Christian people ought to kunne, common things of holy
writ, gospels and epistles read in church, be well translated and
truly, sentence for sentence, with good declaration [i.e. exposition],
whoso read it, he shall the better understand it, both in Latin and
English 2.

In such a moderate demand as this. Purvey would have found
support not only from the jurists of Cologne, who argued in 1398
that the simple and open places in the Bible might be translated
for the use of lay people, but also from all others who considered
a glossed translation safer than an unglossed. In another tract
also Purvey demanded the translation of gospel and epistle at
mass itself^. Similarly, in Germany, the earliest orthodox

^ li. 6. 26, pp. I, 2.
' Id. p. 15.

^ See infra; and li. 6. 26, p. 87: "those that contrarion the gospel and
the epistle and would let it to be preached."

XI] purvey's twelve tracts 273

manual to recommend vernacular Bible reading after 1500, re-
commended the use of German plenaries or Gospel books 1.

All the tracts in this series deal with this subject of vernacular
Bibles: the lawfulness of Bible translations in the abstract, the
lawfulness of lords and gentles' possessing them, and the lawful-
ness of simple people's possessing and learning them by
heart. The second tract begins: "Our Lord Jesu Christ, very
God and very man, saith in the gospel 2"; the third, "Our
Lord Jesu Christ made the gospel. . . . Also Christian men must
sue Christ in manner of living as Jesu saith in the gospel . . . but
Christian men know not Christ's life but by gospel: then ought
the gospel to be'preached that men may know Christ's [life] and
follow them thereafter ^" The fourth begins: " Another sentence
commending the gospel in our mother tongue"; the fifth, "An-
other sentence shewing that the people may have holy writ in
their mother tongue lawfully"; the sixth, "This that sueth
sheweth that all those be in great peril that letten the testament
of Christ to be known and kept of the people"; the seventh,
" This treatise that foUoweth proveth that each nation may law-
fully have holy writ in their mother tongue"; the eighth, "An-
other chapter strengthening the sentences that go before"; the
ninth, "These be the arms of Antichrist's disciples against true
men: And the letter slayeth." The tenth is the above-mentioned
epilogue, or lamentation that "Christ's law is laid asleep and
little set by of Antichrist and of his false clerks." The eleventh
is "A commendation of holy writ in our own language," and the
twelfth "A dialogue of a wise man and a fool, denying the truth
with fables."

All the tracts seem to be sermons, addressed to such rustic
audiences as Purvey might have met with in his pastoral journeys :
not to an academic audience. The words "dear friends," "and
now, dear friends^," occur frequently, and even the last dialogue
has them occasionally, shewing that an audience was contem-
plated. There is an interesting passage shewing that by this
writer at least, the foreign word "Lollard" was connected with
the English verb "loll."

1 See p. 129. ■ li- 6. 26, p. 43.

3 Id. pp. 49, 52, 56, 80, 82, 91, 93. 98, 102, 116.
* Id. p. 108.

D. W. B. 18

274 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

The most blessed LoUer that ever was or ever shall be was our
Lord Jesu Christ, for our sins lolling on the rood tree: and of his
livery and suit were Peter and Andrew, and other more. These were
blessed Lollers, lolling on the right hand of Jesu, with the repentant
thief in God's mercy, to whom our Lord behight the bliss of paradise
the same day. But good friends, what was the cause that Christ and
His suers were lolled thus? Certes for their faithful speaking against
the sins of the people, and specially for they spoken against the
covetise and sins of untrue bishops, and of false feigned religious. . . .
Now it were to speak of cursed Lollers and untrue,deceiving God . . . . ^

Elsewhere Purvey complained of the danger of professing
Lollardy: a man, he says, may sin grievously, but if he "pay
the summoner," he shall be called " a manful man, and profitable
to holy Church."

But if a man speak God's word and live thereafter, and faileth not
for no persecution ne loss of worldly goods, anon he shall be cursed
and put out of the Church, and if he may be caught he shall be burnt
as an heretic^.

The "dialogue between a wise man and a fool" seems to be
rather between a faint hearted Lollard, most unwilling to "lose
his goods" and adopt the Puritan strictness of the Lollards, and
one of sterner metal, who complains of his faintheartedness and
finally converts him:

But some say, I pray thee, leave these speeches, and tell me a
merry tale of Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, or of Robin Hood,
or of some well faring man, of their conditions and manners.. . .Let
us live as our fathers did, and then good enough ; for they were well
loved of theaters, wrestlers, buckler-players, of dancers and singers:
and they were well willed to have them to the ale: yea, and oft
times on Sundays for good fellowship they would dine and drink by
night, and go to church after, and so let us do nowadays, and we
shall have the blessing of Saint Thomas of Canterbury. Yea, man,
and if you have well drunk at home, thy stomach shall wax warm
though it be cold weather, and the sweet savour of good ale shall
rise into thy brain, and bring thee merry asleep, yea, and though the
priest preach then never so false, it shall no more grieve thee than
the sound of a mere harp.

Thus the tract, The Holy Prophet David saith, and this series
of Purvey's, give us the Lollard apologetic for vernacular
scriptures down to the writing of the General Prologue in 1395.

The history of Lollardy between the years 1382, when

1 li. 6. 26, p. 116. ^ Id. p. 125.

XI] THE EARLY VERSION FINISHED 275

Wycliffe retired to Lutterworth, and 1408 when his translation
was prohibited, was closely bound up with the fortune of Purvey,
its leading scholar and probably also its political leader. And
throughout that period Purvey gave his labour, to a far greater
extent than Wycliffe his master had ever done, to the perfecting
and defence of the English Bible.

The first work to be taken in hand was the completion of
Hereford's version, broken off at Baruch iii. 20, — that is, with
two-thirds of the Bible-and-Apocrypha translated, and Ezekiel,
Daniel, the minor prophets, Maccabees and the New Testament
as the last third, still left to be done. There is much probability
that Wycliffe's secretary was chiefly responsible for the finishing
of this first version: and in any case, the Leicester parchemyner
was copying the Lollard gospels and epistles by 1384^. This
points to the completion of the New Testament in that year, or
very soon after.

§2. Purvey's next task was one which possibly had been
foreseen by the makers of the first translation: the provision
of "the doctors' " glosses on part at least of the Bible. Mediaeval
opinion demanded it: and when mediaeval opinion was thus
satisfied, it might be possible to obtain protection for the book by
dedicating it to a royal personage. Purvey took perhaps a year
to add a translation of patristic glosses, of portentous length,
to each gospel-: for he seems to have written the epilogue to
the gloss on S. Luke in 1387. If those on Matthew and Mark were
written earlier, that on John may have been finished the year
after. The epilogue to S. Luke begins:

Therefore a poor caitiff [one of Purvey's usual pseudonyms], letted
from preaching for a time for causes known of God, writeth the
gospel of Luke in English, with a short exposition of old and holy
doctors, to the poor men of his nation, which con little Latin or none,
and be poor of wit and of worldly chattels, and nevertheless, rich of
good will to please God^.

1 See p. 232. Till Bodl. 959 is printed, with its dialectal differences, it
is not possible to assign any part definitely to Purvey, or even Wycliffe:
but the completion of the Bible in that MS., from Baruch iii. 20, has none
of those midland or Kentish forms which would be inconsistent with
Purvey's authorship.

^ For the existent MSS. of these glosses, see pp. 256-7.

* FM, I. ix. FM believed Wycliffe to have been the author of these
glosses on the gospels: but he was never inhibited from preaching, and

18—2

276 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

This seems to refer to an inhibition from preaching in the
diocese of Worcester, which Purvey received in 1387 1. The
bishop's mandate inhibited Nicholas Hereford, John Purvey,
John Aston, John Parker and Wilham Swinderby, "who are
united in a certain illegal association condemned by the law, by
the name or in the rite of the Lollards." Purvey himself was not
imprisoned at this time, but he lamented in the epilogue to
S. Matthew that other Lollards, continually occupied in studying
and teaching of holy writ, were "cursed and forprisoned."

The glosses are founded mainly on the fullest contemporary
catena of patristic glosses on the four gospels, the Catena Aurea
of S. Thomas Aquinas. This is specially the case in the gloss on
S. Matthew, where Purvey acknowledged his borrowings from
Aquinas in the epilogue. Some of the prologues and epilogues
merely discussed authorities, and others lamented the opposition
to the spread of holy writ on the part of proud clerks. The glosses
are given for almost every word of the text, and are more than
ten times as long as the text itself. They are an extraordinary
monument of patience and scholarship.

In the epilogues and prologues, which are very similar in
matter and style to the General Prologue, Purvey described him-
self by a set of veiled titles, of which the "simple creature of
God" of the General Prologue is an example. Describing his
reasons for entering on the work he says:

"For this cause a sinful caitiff having compassion on lewid men-,"
"this coward sinful caitiff allegeth Jerome on Matthew^," "this poor
scribbler is not guilty in his conscience that he erred from truth of
holy writ and very sentence of these doctors*," "this scribbler had
travailed with many false books," "this is the desire of this poor
scribbler," "therefore a sinful caitiff, letted fro preaching for a time
for causes known of God^," "this poor caitiff setteth a full sentence
of the text together," "therefore a simple creature of God, willing to
bear in party the charges of simple poor men, well willing to God's

never made use of the pseudonyms (simple creature, etc., see above),
found in the prologues and epilogues to the glosses. That these are genuinely
the work of the compiler of the glosses, is shewn by the closeness with
which the discussion of authorities and method of translation fits the
text of the glosses.

1 For Lollardy in Bristol, see pp. 357; 379 n. for Wakefield's Reg.

^ Laud Misc. 235, f. 2, col. i. ^ Id. f. 2, col. 2.

* Id. i. 264 b, col. I ; see p. 457 for next two quotations.

5 Bodl. 143, f. 3 b, col. 2.

XI] purvey's glosses on the gospels 277

cause, setteth a short gloss in English on the gospel of John^,"
" wherefore a simple creature expoundeth shortly the gloss of Matthew
to lewid men in English tongue^."

By the use of these "pseudonyms" Purvey had no serious in-
tention of implying that he was himself unlearned, for he re-
ferred continually to the "doctors" he had studied, and in one
case even compared his scholastic equipment not unfavourably
with that of S. Thomas Aquinas :

Whatever doctor or gloss I allege, and tell not specially where, I
take that allegeance^ of Aquinas on Matthew, for he had many more
originals, both of Greeks and of Latins, than I have now, and I have
many sharp doctors which he had not*.

In all the prologues and epilogues^ Purvey set forth his in-
tention, and lamented the opposition to it, in some such words
as those in the epilogue on S. Matthew:

The writer of this gloss purposed to God's honour, and help of
Christian souls, for to tell truly holy writ, and shortly and plainly
the most profitable sentence of these beforesaid doctors: and hitherto,
blessed be God of His great gift and gracious, this poor scribbler is
not guilty in his conscience that he erred from truth of holy writ and
very sentence of these doctors. ... Alas good spouse of souls, Jesu
Christ: why forsakest thou so much Thy people: that sinful men's
ordinance be openly taught, and maintained by worldly priests and
their fautours: and Thine ordinance, of Avilful poverty and great
meekness of clerks, and continual occupation of them in studying
and teaching holy writ, is despised and holden error, and they cursed
and forprisoned that would bring again thy best ordinance*!"

Of these prologues and epilogues, one was incorporated by
Purvey or some follower into his set of tracts in defence of
English scriptures, and another by himself into the General
Prologue '.

Meanwhile, under Purvey's leadership, Lollardy continued to
have its representatives at court, among the knights, and among
the poorer classes in the country reached by the travelling
preachers. Personages who were suspected of favouring it, like
Gaunt and to some extent Gloucester, and well-known pro-

^ Bodl. 243, f. 115 b, col. 2.

- Trin. Camb. 36, f. 7: of. Gen. Prol. cap. xv.

* Quotation. * Trin. Camb. 36, f. 7.

* See that printed pp. 456-61. • See p. 457. ' See pp. 281, 456.

278 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

fessors of it, like the earl of Salisbury, and the knights Clifford,
Stury, Pecche, Clanvowe, etc., were too powerful to be attacked
by the bishops: but in the country districts certain Lollard
preachers were tried and forced to recant. At Leicester,
William Smith, Wycliffe and Purvey's "parchemyner," did
penance in the market place in 1392, and handed over to the
archbishop, under compulsion, "the solemn (or well written)
books of the gospel and epistles, and other epistles, and doctors
in the mother tongue, which he had written, and as he confessed,
he had been studiously toiling to write them for eight years ^," —
since 1384, in fact. Such "solemn" books may well have been
the fine copies of the Wycliffite scriptures possessed by Glou-
cester, and probably many of the Lollard knights. The reference
to the "doctors" in connexion with the gospels and epistles
shews that he had, among other books, copied Purvey's glossed
gospels, — the surviving manuscripts of which, especially one
which has the text rubricated and written very large, are cer-
tainly "solemn" or imposing books.

Through the instrumentality probably of some Lollard at
court, these "doctors on the gospels" were presented to the
queen. Richard II himself possessed a French Bible ^ according
to contemporary custom: but to Anne of Bohemia, who before
1384 read the gospels in Latin, Czech and German ^ French was
probably less useful than the language of her adopted country.
She was also supposed to be, to some extent, favourable to the
Lollards, for her father had founded and encouraged the uni-
versity of Prague, which gave so favourable a reception to
Wycliffe's followers and teaching. Anne died in 1394, and
Purvey wrote later ^:

The bishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, that now is^, said in
a sermon at Westminster, there as were many hundred people, at
the burying of queen Anne, of whose soul God have mercy: and in
his commending of her, he said it was more joy of her than of any
woman that ever he knew, for notwithstanding that she was an alien

^ FM, I. xxxiii, from Knighton's continuator, the Leicester canon.

^ Devon, in Issues of the Exchequer, 213, calls it a Bible written in the
"Gaelic" language, misreading "inidiomate Gallico" (French). Probably it
was a Bible Histoviale.

' See p. 248. * See p. 445.

' When Purvey wrote, c. 1405: he was archbishop of York in 1394.

XI] ARUNDEL LICENSES THE QUEEN TO USE THEM 279

bom, she had on English all the four gospellers, wdth the doctors
upon them. And he said she had sent them unto him, and he said
they were good and true, and commended her in that she was so
great a lady, and also an alien, and would so lowlily study in so
virtuous books.

The "four gospellers with the doctors upon them" were cer-
tainly Purvey's glosses. There was at the time another set of
Enghsh glossed gospels, written in the north midlands^, but the
description does not fit them with anything of the exactitude it
fits Purvey's. The north midland glosses are throughout a free
comment on the text, in the author's own words: while Purvey's
are exact translations from passages of the "doctors," and as
such he frequently speaks of them in his prologues 2. Anne sent
them to Arundel for approbation, according to mediaeval
custom : and it is of interest that he thus publicly approved them.
It is most unlikely the copies presented to her contained any
Lollard prologue or epilogue, but it is almost certain that the
gloss on Matthew contained one heretical passage^. This how-
ever was embedded, without title or marking, in the middle of

^ See p. 310. The translator in the prologue states that he is going to
set forth the "saws of doctors" and not his own opinions, but no references
or doctors' names are given in the text itself, as in the Lollard glosses.

* The epilogue to Matthew begins : " Here endeth a short gloss on Matthew
which [is] taken of holy doctors, Jerome, Austin, Ambrose, Gregory,
Bernard, Chrysostom, Grosthead, Rabanus, and other more." The epilogue
to John has: "Some suppose that Parisiensis made this treatise, but I
am not certain thereof; nevertheless, whoever made it, it seemeth that he
allegeth well holy scripture, reason and holy doctors, and this sufficeth
enow to reasonable men"; Lord Dillon's MS. f. 59 fc, col. i. The prologue
to Luke has "he setteth a full sentence of the text together, that it well
may be known from the exposition, afterward he setteth a sentence of
a doctor declaring the text, and in the end of the sentence he setteth the
doctor's name, that men msLy know how far his sentence goeth. Only the
text of holy writ, and sentence of old doctors and approved, been set in
this exposition." See also p. 458.

^ The gloss on Luke xvii. 19 has one long heretical digression, which
appears to be original and not an insertion because (a) it arises out of the
subject which is being glossed in the ordinary course, (ft) it occurs in all
three of the MSS. in which we possess this gloss (see p. 456). After the
glosses on the healing of the ten lepers, Luke xvii. 19, thy faith hath made
thee safe, a long digression on the healing of the leper, and repentance
through faith alone, without confession, is inserted without special marking
or rubric, Kk. 2. 9, ff. 202 ft, col. 2 — 208 ft, col. 2. The passage occurs in
Bodl. 143, as can be seen by the beginning, and the marginal references
to authorities: but two folios of the heretical matter, ff. 159 ft and 160,
have the text carefully erased with pumice stone. This MS. must have
belonged to an orthodox fifteenth century owner, who wrote on the outside

28o ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

a very long and cumbrous book, or books, and it is very unlikely
that either Anne or Arundel ever discovered it. There is nothing
remarkable either in Arundel's praise of a work he probably
knew to be Purvey's, for it was episcopal policy to try to win
over the scholarly Lollards by argument and benignancy:
Hereford had been so won over by 1393. Nor was it contrary
to mediaeval consistency to praise a queen for reading the
gospels in the vernacular, while two years earlier the scribe who
probably wrote her very books was punished as a Lollard. A
princess who read the Latin text could certainly, with license,
read the English gospels, with the doctors' exposition on them:
for a professional scribe, or middle class Lollard, to use the bare
text at will was a different matter.

Anne may have had the glossed gospels earlier than 1394, if
Purvey finished them by about 1390^. Meanwhile, he had
already begun another task 2, that described in the General
Prologue as making the traiislation of the Bible "as open or
openlier in English as it is in Latin." The need of producing a
version which could be quoted to the unlearned, and memorised,
was now obvious, and Purvey substantially completed it in 1395.
Judging by the time needed for such a work, he probably began
it when he finished the glosses, 1388-90: but he may, of course,
have carried on the two works simultaneously. For the glosses
he had used the first or hteral translation^: and the second
version of the Bible which he nov/ made was founded closely
upon the first. This he described in the General Prologue as
"the English Bible late translated," naturally without going

folio, now f. 222 b, "Opus fratris Thomae de Aquino a doctoribus diversis
extractum et translatum in linguam maternam." Bodl. 243 has the
heretical passage on ff. 82-84.

1 FM, I. viii conjectures that the glossed gospels may have been produced
earlier than the EV itself: this cannot be finally decided till the text of
the EV is re-edited and compared with that of the glosses: but it is most
unlikely, (i) because so large a compilation as the glossed gospels, which
is not merely the translation of one Latin gloss, must have taken 4 or 5
years, and this earlier than the making of the EV, which was c. 1380-4!
The time-schedule of Wycliffe's Latin works has been so closely worked
out by the Rev. H. S. Cronin for a forthcoming book, that it is seen to be
practically impossible for Wycliffe or his secretary to have accomplished
the glosses before 1380, and the references to Bible reading in Wycliffe's
work do not support it. (2) The epilogue to the gloss on Luke strongly
points to 1387 as the date of writing.

2 See p. 258.

XI] PURVEY FINISHES THE LATER VERSION 281

more closely into its origin^. After he had completed the making
of this second version, he wrote a very long prologue to the Old
Testament, — the part he was perhaps latest in completing, —
the General Prologtie which has been described elsewhere ^. Like
his prologues and epilogues to the glossed gospels, it contained
all the notes on authorities and method which as a scholar he
wished to prefix to his work, and it was also the culmination of
his series of sermons in defence of English scriptures. While
Purvey was writing the tract, and when, after describing the
contents of each book of the Old Testament, he was intending
to quote from the fathers explanations of the interpretations of
scripture, he found himself without the books he needed ^. He
had by him his own prologue to the gloss on S. Matthew, which
contained a series of quotations from the De Doctrina Christiana
of S. Augustine, dealing with the interpretation of scripture.
He therefore paraphrased his o^n translation of the De Docirina
Christiana, keeping the order of the-passages exactly, but supply-
ing sentences in between, so that nearly the whole of the long
prologue* was finally embedded.

§ 3. The unexpected death of Anne, for she was only twent}'-
eight, was a blow to the political hopes of the Lollards: and
probably the immunity of the greater Lollards, and the attacks
upon the lower, inspired them in an atternpt they now made to
place their case before parliament. Richard was desolate at the
queen's loss, and at her funeral ^ quarrelled with archbishop

^ The writer of the article on Versions of the Bible, English, in CE is
thus right in dating the glosses as posterior to the EV, but his statement
that "the style of the text of the commentary resembles that of the later
version rather than the early version," is unjustified. The gospel text
does not "resemble" either, but is that of the EV, from a comparison of
al) the MSS. of the glossed gospels with the EV as printed in FM. If, as
the writer implies, certain short biblical verses quoted in the gloss itself
" resemble " the LV rather than the EV, that is probably because the editor
was here translating at sight, without the need to construe: or quite
possibly the making of the LV of the gospels was contemporary with that
of the glosses, while the LV of the rest of the Bible was not finished till
c. 1395. See appendix, date of LV, pp. 374, 381.

2 pp. 258-66. ' See p. 265.

* Laud Misc. 235, f. i: Saint Austin saith in the second book of Christian
doctrine. . .abate soon antichrist's malice, hypocrisy and tyranny; in
Harl. 6333, a fifteenth centurj- MS., the scribe has omitted the last, violently
Lollard, paragraphs, and then copied the Lollard Ununt ex Quattuor, etc.
See infra, p. 303. * 4 Aug. 1394.

282 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

Arundel's brother; in December, i394\ he sailed for Ireland,
and Purvey and the London Lollards thought the time favour-
able for their attempt. They were sure of some support from
the anti-clericals, who desired the confiscation of clerical
revenues. Purvey and his friends, — perhaps the Lollard knights
who came to London for the parliament, — used a Latin tract of
Purvey's, setting forth the opinions of the Lollards under thirty-
seven conclusions, and made an expanded and more violent
English translation of it, for propaganda purposes 2. The duke
of York presided over parliament, which sat from 27 Jan. till
15 Feb., and in this parliament the Lollard knights, probably
with Stury as their spokesman, read a violent document called
the Twelve Conchtsions of the Lollards. This pamphlet recom-
mended those who wished for further information, to seek it in
the Thirty-Seven Conclusions, which set forth the matter more
at large. The Lollards seemed so politically strong that great
fear and indignation was aroused among the clerical party, and
it was probably now, and in this parliament ^, that a counter-
measure was taken: Purvey, whose tale there is no reason to
doubt, says that:

It is known to many men, that in the time of king Richard, whose
soul may God assoil, into parhament was put a bill,. . .to annul the
Bible that time translated into English, and also other books of the
gospel translated into English; which when it was seen of lords and
commons, the good duke of Lancaster, John, M^hose soul God assoil
for His mercy, answered thereto sharpl}^ saying this sentence: "We
will not be refuse of all men, for sithen other nations have God's
law, which is law of our belief, in their own mother language, we
will have ours in English, who that ever it begrudgeth." And this
he affirmed with a great oath*.

Probably the violent nature of the Lollard attack had oc-
casioned the change in episcopal, or at least in Arundel's, opinion
about the Enghsh Bible, and the "other books of the gospel

^ Walsingham, RS, 11. 216. ^ See pp. 375, 379.

' The lines following refer to Arundel as chancellor: he resigned the
chancer}' in 1396. It is unlikely that this bill was introduced before
Arundel's sermon at Anne's funeral, Aug. 1394: and the only parliament
between that and Arundel's resignation of the chancery was this parliament
of 1395- The next was Jan.-Feb. 1397; cf. p. 297, n 4.

* See p. 444. For the parliament of 1395, see p. 374; for suppression
of scripture-reading London Lollards in 1392, VCH, London, i. 218.

XI] THE STORM IN I395 283

translated into English," — probably the very glosses Arundel
had approved in his sermon six months earlier. Neither the
Lollard Twelve Conclusions, nor the bill against translations, re-
ceived suihcient support from lords or commons to be redrafted
by the royal lawyers, and enrolled on the parliament rolls,
awaiting the royal assent^. But the agitation among the clericals
was so great, that archbishop Arundel and the bishop of London
sailed in haste to Ireland, taking with them the Twelve Con-
clusions, and a long Latin answer to each, written by Roger
Dymok, a monk 2. Richard relinquished his Irish campaign, and
returned and lectured his Lollard courtiers, even taking an oath
of sir Richard Stury the privy councillor to abjure his opinions,
threatening him with a most shameful death if he refused. The
greatest political effort of the Lollards had failed for the time
being: and Purvey returned to the finishing off of the General
Prologue, speaking in a digression of this "last parliament," and
transcribing a passage of particular violence ^ from the Thirty-
Seven Conclusions. The later version of the Bible had been
practically* complete before: and we have a manuscript of
this New Testament dated 1397 ^

§ 4. Between 1395 and 1401 nothing is known of Purvey,
though he probably still made London his headquarters. Gaunt
died in 1399, and the house of Lancaster succeeded Richard II,
but with no favourable results to the Lollards. On May 12,
1400, Henry IV sent a letter to the sheriffs of London, directing
their enforcement of the law that no chaplain, or unbeneficed
priest, should preach without the hcense of the diocesan: and
certain secular priests of London sent a petition to the king
against the aforesaid letter^. This year too saw the burning of
Sawtre. the first Lollard martyr. It was probably on account
of the increased vigilance in London against Lollard preachers,
that Purvey himself was taken and imprisoned, pending trial,
in Saltwood Castle; his trial in London indicates, in lack of

^ See p. 297, n. 4.

^ Printed EHR, xxii. 292 ; cf. id. xxvi. 738.

^ See p. 257 n.

* But for the translation of certain short prologues from the Vulgate,
see p. 377.

* See p. 381.

« Digby MS. 98, f. 179 b.

284 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

other evidence, that he was taken in that diocese^. He was cited
for various heresies and errors in the chapter house of S. Paul's
the last day of February, 1401, and he read a recantation of them
at Paul's Cross on March 6th. Lollardy lost its most able
champion. Thorpe the Lollard attributed the recantation to the
horrors Purvey had undergone in Saltwood Castle 2, and the
burning of Sawtre the year before had been enough to make
him shrink. But there was probably another reason which made
constancy like Sawtre's impossible for him : his scholarship and
breadth of view. He belonged properly to the earlier generation
of Lollards under Wychffe^, all of whom had submitted to
clerical censure or withdrawn their opinions ; and, like Cranmer
later, he was afflicted with a capacity for seeing both sides of
the question. His recantation now, and indecision later, are
illustrated in a tract written later, the Sixteen Points putten by
bishops ordinarily upon men which they clepen Lollards^. The
Lollards in 1388-9 had described in Latin and EngUsh tracts
twenty-five articles falsely attributed to them : Purvey 's EngHsh
tract ^ is a similar defence against misstatement and misrepre-
sentation. The tract dealt with the Lollard attitude to the
sacrament of the altar, penance, tithes, the pope, images, par-
dons, etc., and in all of these matters Purvey pursued a via media,
noticeable in contrast to the views of the leading Lollards after
1400. After recounting the sixteen disputed points. Purvey says:

Whoever shall say these sixteen points, be he well ware that in
every of them is hid truth and falsehood, and who that ever granteth
all, granteth much falsehood : and who that ever denieth all, denieth
many truths True Christian men should answer advisedly, truly

' There is no evidence for anj^ imprisonment of Purvey before this date :
so prominent a Lollard would hardly have been kept in prison indefinitely
without trial, and he was not tried as a lapsed heretic in 1401. The reputed
imprisonment in 1396 (see FM, i. xxiv n. 4, and DNB) rests upon a
mistaken marginal note of bishop Bale in his MS. of the FZ, where he
dated Purvey's confession as 1396 (FZ, 407). Foxe used this MS., and
perpetuated the error, stating that the MS. was itself dated 1396, whereas
it was actually dated 1439 (FZ, ix n. i, Hen. IV. in. 312).

2 Pollard, 165.

3 The contrast between the character and views of the first and second
generation of Lollards is well brought out by A. Dakin in Die Beziehungen
John Wiclifs und der Lollarden zu den Betielmdnchen, Kingsgate Press,
1911, 68.

* Printed pp. 462-5, and see for evidence of authorship p. 461.

XI] PURVEY 'S SIXTEEN POINTS 285

and meekly to the points and articles that been put against them^ . . .
Christian men should believe that the sacrament on the altar is verily
Christ's body sacramentally and spiritually 2, and more other manners
than any earthly man can tell among us; for Christ, that may not
lie, said, she\ving the bread that He held in His hand: This is my
body. . . . Also we grant that shrift of mouth is needful to all such
that been counselled of God for to make it meekly. . . . We suppose
there have been many hoh^ fathers popes sithen saint Peter's time,
(though this name Pope be not said in God's law),... and so we
grant that the pope of Rome should next follow Christ and saint
Peter in manner of living, and if he do so, he is worthily Pope, and
if he contran,' him most of all others, he is most antichrist.

Simila^l3^ it is allowed that tithes are sometimes lawful, that
pardons and indulgences grounded in holy writ may be granted,
that laymen of good Hves are not priests of office, but only
spiritually, that the pope may make laws, and bishops have
temporal goods in reasonable measure. In the question whether
the chief office of priests is to preach or to minister the sacra-
ments, it is noticeable that Purvey 's dictum interjects a demand
for the translation of the gospel and epistle at mass, or at least
their explanation in a sermon.

Also, we grant that priests were ordained of Christ to teach and
preach the people, and not only that, but also to pray, and to minister
the sacraments of God and live well. And of good ordinance of Holy
Church they be ordained by men to say both mattins and masses,
in which be contained both gospel and pistle, and other books of
holy writ, for that end that they should after their reading declare
it to the people in their mother tongue.

This tract has been quoted as throwing light upon Purvey's
recantation, orthodoxy, and subsequent relapse. This expression
of his mind, not put forward upon pressure hke the articles he
had to retract at Paul's Cross, explains Thorpe's cry: "John
Purvey is neither hot nor cold," and Arundel's anger against
him as a " false harlot : . . . but come he more for such cause before
me, ere we depart, I shall know with whom he holdeth^."

1 Cf. Purvey's adjuration to meekness, p. 265.

2 Lewis (as he says in Rawl. C. 11, p. i), copied some of this tract from a
MS. written, he thought, in Henry VI's reign. He did not copy Trin. 333:
and he inverted this clause, putting it " The bread or the host. . .is not very
God's body."

» PoUard, 118.

286 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

§ 5. A few other references to the Wychffite translations, not
specially connected with Purvey's career, have come down to us
for this period of 1382-1401.

William Swinderby, the hermit of the Lollard school at the
chapel of S. John Baptist, Leicester, after a trial for heresy at
Leicester, was tried by bishop Trevenant at Hereford in June
1389^. The prologue to the account of his trial mentions as the
Lollards' greatest offence, their unlicensed preaching, and in-
sistence on the literal interpretation of scripture: "they explain
holy scripture to the people literally, in the new-fangled way,
otherwise than as the Holy Spirit teaches." There is no reference
to translations at his trial, but these words shew the value
attached by the Lollards to the text of scripture, as do all other
Lollard trials.

That of Walter Brute (or, the Welshman) at Hereford is of
great interest for the history of Nicholas Hereford and the early
version of the Wycliffite Bible. Trevenant's register describes
him as a "litterate layman ^" and the long written defence he
submitted to the bishop shews a good deal of learning^. He
finally made his submission on Oct. 3, 1393, and the masters of
theology before whom he made it included his old leader,
Nicholas Hereford*. This filled him with such bitterness that
he wrote a tract to Hereford, upbraiding him as a traitor and
a deserter -^ and making a pointed reference to Hereford's earlier
share in the translation of the Bible. The tract begins by
arguing that, since no man putting his hand to the plough and
looking back is fit for the kingdom of God, and since by the
kingdom of God is understood, the knowledge of holy scripture :

1 Reg. Johannis Trefnant, ep. Herefordensis 1389-1404, Capes, W. W.,
CYS, XX. 231 fif.

2 Id. 278.

* Gairdner, i. 38. It is not impossible that he had some share in the
translation of the E V : but there is no evidence for his residence at Oxford
about 1382.

* FM, I. xvii; for Hereford's fierce Lollardy, see Walsingham, 11. 159.

' See Reg. 394-8. The name of the author of the tract is not given in the
register, but it is copied in in connexion with the trials of Swinderby and
Brute (together with another written in Nicholas Hereford's defence).
The author of the tract is alluded to as the "master of the heretic Swinderb}',
and of other Lollards," p. 398, and it is suggested that it is due to his per-
suasions that Swinderby has relapsed after his recantation at Lincoln. This
points to Brute as the author of the tract upbraiding Hereford.

XI] PALMER AND HEREFORD 287

how can Nicholas Hereford be fit for the kingdom of God, since
he has looked back after putting his hand to the plough, "that
is, to the sowing of the word of God and holy scripture,. . .as
well by preaching as by affording an example of good works:
nay more, by making clear the knowledge of holy scripture^ "?
The tract continues with a punning and bitter reference to
Nicholas Hereford and the Nicolaitans, since Nicholas has
"left the infallible knowledge of holy scripture," and no longer
enters into the ground of truth by the exposition of the gospel:
neither does he enter into that knowledge himself, nor suffer
others to enter into it-.

The tract is followed in the register by a defence of Hereford,
in his name and person, by Thomas Palmer. This friar belonged
to the Dominican house of Holborn, or Blackfriars, the scene of
so many prominent Lollard trials. He wrote many theological^
works, and took part in the trial of Oldcastle in 1412*. Palmer
began by stating that the Lollard's attack on Hereford has been
sent on to him^, and that he will answer it in the person of
Hereford, who has been accused of putting his hand to the
plough, and looking back.

The doctrine of S. Gregory'- shews that a man may lawfully and
unlawfully look back after he has put his hand to the plough : . . . for
I, after I had put my hand to the plough, looked back lawfully, by
correcting the errors which I had committed by so ploughing.

He then answered the four conclusions put forward by the
Lollard, the first of which is significant in connexion with
Hereford's share in making known the Uteral text of the Bible
by a translation. The conclusion is that the words of the first
four doctors expounding holy scripture according to the obvious
meaning are without exception true: Palmer answered that the

1 Reg. 394. The final sentence cannot refer merely to preaching, for that
is mentioned earlier.

- The tract is long and wrangling, and seems to embody arguments de-
livered verbally between Brute and Hereford, at the trial of the former.

8 Quoted by Bale, etc. Boston of Bury's list of Westminster MSS. in-
cluded No 15, a determination of Thomas Palmer, friar preacher, "in
materia scismatis," Westminster, 23; cf. p. 293.

♦ AM. III. 334. Foxe wrongly calls him "warden of the Minors," in. 329.
Foxe quotes the letter against Hereford, in. 190, but not Palmer's answer
to it.

5 Reg. 396.

288 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

words of holy scripture are to be expounded "sometimes
morally, sometimes allegorically, and sometimes anagogically,
and not according to the literal meaning of the words, — as in
the biblical poems, which in no case are to be interpreted as
literally true."

In 1397, again, there is another reference in Trevenant's
register to the Lollard translation of the "bare text" of scrip-
ture. King Richard, who had busied himself on his return from
Ireland with the unorthodoxy of the Lollard knights, wrote to
the bishop, enclosing to him a copy of renunciation of heretical
opinions by John Croft, a Herefordshire squire, and all his
family. Croft swore, apparently at the king's request, that he
would never in future read or preach, publicly or secretly, any
new doctrine contrary to the catholic faith, nor read or own

English books extracted from holy scripture according to the bare
text, with evil intent, by certain persons commonly called Lollards,
who oppose the catholic faith and the doctrine of the Roman church.
These men tr^' not only to infatuate our simplicity, but make per-
verse people obstinately to transgress from the wholesome and true
understanding of holy scripture and evangelical doctrine and the
orthodox faith ^.

This passage shews that Croft and his family had been using
the unglossed Lollard Bible, or parts of it, and shews once more
the orthodox objection to placing the "bare text" in the hands
of laymen. It is noticeable, however, that while Smith at
Leicester in 1392, and Croft at Hereford in 1397, were being
forbidden the use of English scriptures, Thomas duke of Glou-
cester died in 1397 possessing a copy of the early version of the
Bible 2, and bequeathed it without remark. In 1394 also, John
Hopton, a chantry priest of York, bequeathed to the chantry
" a book of the gospels in English-," — most probably the Lollard
gospels. It is just possible that the book was actually the
northern temporale, or verse gospels and homilies, or the homilies
known as the Mirrur, or again that it was the north midland
glossed gospels described later. According to the custom of wills

^ "Neque libros Anglicos secundum nudum textum de sacra scriptura
sinistre extractos per quosdam LoUardos," etc., 148.

2 Brit. Mus. Class. Cat. of MSS., English Bibles.

3 TE, I. 196; he was chaplain of the chantry of S. Nicholas in the church
of Holy Trinity, Gotheromgate. For partial biblical translations contem-
porary with the Lollard versions, see pp. 298-318.

XI] WILLIAM BUTLER'S DETERMINATION 289

of the period, however, the word "gloss" or "rhyme" would
usually, in that case, have been inserted. Quite possibly it was
a book of liturgical gospels ^, based on the Lollard text. The last
case of the bequest of English scriptures before 1408^ is that of
the Wykehamist, John Bount, burgess of Bristol, who in 1404
bequeathed to John Canterbury a "book of the gospels in
English, now in the keeping of William Stourton." John Bount
seems to have been quite orthodox, judging from his will: yet
his possession of English scriptures may not have been uncon-
nected with the preaching of Lollardy in Bristol, which a con-
temporary ranked with London as a "specially corrupt Lollard
centre^."

§ 6. To return to the last phase of Purvey's career, between
1401 and 1408, after which he relapsed into obscurity. He re-
canted in March 1401, and in August was inducted to the vicar-
age of West Hythe, "not a mile," as Arundel said, "from Salt-
wood Castle," where the archbishop could keep a watchful eye
upon him. In 1403 he resigned the living, and seems for a time
to have led a life which pleased neither the Lollards nor Arundel.
Thorpe's interview with Arundel in 1407 shews that Pur^-ey was
not then openly professing Lollardy: Arundel shews that his
actions or mode of life was in some way highly displeasing to him.
He seems to have spent his time between Oxford and London,
making fresh efforts in the defence of EngUsh Bibles, and
stirring up afresh the controversy which had so long raged, in
which the friars had taken so large a part.

In 140 1 William Butler, a regent (or officially lecturing)
master of the Franciscans at Oxford, and later their warden ^
had read a long determination against the lawfulness of any
translation of the Bible into the vernacular. The occasion of his
action is obscure^: but it was in accordance with the consistent

^ See pp. 39, 285.

- Till 1 408 there was no obstacle to priests or substantial laymen owning
English scriptures. Bount left bequests to both Winchester and his Oxford
college: see Great Orphan Book, ed. Wadley, T. P., 1886, 73.

^ Chron. Adae de Usk, ed. Maunde Thompson, 3; note also Purvey's
preaching there, and the Bristol Carmelite Lavenham's familiarity with
his errors; for pro-English-Bible agitation in London, 1401, see p. 297.

* He was probably elected warden of the Oxford minorites in 1406,
though his tenure of that office was reckoned from 1408, cf. Grey friars in
Oxford, Little, A. G., 254. * See Bale. 1557, Script. Cat. p. 536.

D.w. B. 19

290 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

attitude of the English friars. His determination was opposed,
not to the Wychffite translations in particular, but to the lawful-
ness of any translation: its views are utterlj' opposed to those,
for instance, of sir Thomas More later. He took his stand on the
broad grounds of the difficulty of translation, and of securing the
circulation of correct English texts, and the providential dis-
pensation of the inferiority of the laity : it was no business of the
lay folk to read the Bible, and the human intellect, unassisted
by the grace of priesthood, was insufficient for it. The earthly
hierarchy should be an image of the heavenly, where grace was
mediated from the higher to the lower orders. The gospel was
not at first given in writing, and the subtlety of the scripture
was still too great for it to be read in translations. The deter-
mination \Vas based on general principles, not on minor quibbles
concerning the interpretation of biblical texts; and it shews
great learning in the authorities cited. It is noticeable that friar
Butler did not quote Innocent Ill's letter to Metz, though he
quoted from one of Innocent II to S. Bernard on the subject of
the heretics Abelard and Arnold of Brescia. Probably he was
unaware of the Metz letter; for none of the three English deter-
minations given at Oxford about this time made any use of it.
The friars at Oxford had certainly been attacking the Wycliffites
on the score of translations before this; but this tract of 140 1 is
the first which has come down to us^. Butler read the deter-
mination openly in the schools: but there is no evidence in this
case that any other doctor "determined against him."

Before the year 1405 a great debate on the lawfulness of
vernacular Bibles was also held at Oxford, between a regent
master with strong Lollard sympathies, and the before-men-
tioned friar Thomas Palmer. There is much reason to believe
that the Lollard doctor was Peter Payne, or Peter the Clerk,
and that he was stirred up to engage in the debate by Purvey
himself, who composed Latin and English records of the debate
afterwards, adding arguments of his own. In the LLtin version
of Purvey's tract De Versione Bihliorum he said that the subject
debated was:

^ Printed infra, pp. 401-18, from Merton 68, "Butler: contra transla-
tionem Anglicanam."

XI] purvey's de versione bibliorum 291

^Vh ether, since it was lawful for S. Jerome to translate the sacred
canon from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, it is in like manner lawful
to translate it into other tongues, less principal and less beautiful?
And though in the time of our forefathers this point was never in
doubt, now indeed so great a dispute has arisen about it, that two
weighty doctors of this university have been spending the whole
time of their lectures upon this question. One of them contended
by certain arguments for the negative answer to this question, and
the other, after him, contended for the afhrmative answer, by I
know not how many powerful arguments. Neither, however, disclosed
to the school what he wished finally to define in the matter. First
then I shall recite some arguments from the first doctor, and shall
add some more of mv own in favour of a negative answer to the
article. And thirdly, I shall according to my ability, answer the
arguments which are made against the article^.

The doctor to whom Purvey thus had recourse yto defend

EngHsh Bibles in the schools must almost certainly have been

Peter Payne, v/hom contemporaries mention as the only daring

Oxford Lollard at the date 2, though even he could not openly

profess his views. He was born about 1380, and introduced at

Oxford to the doctrines of Wy cliff e, of whom he became a great

admirer. He became a regent master of theology shortly before

^ Long quotations from the De Ver. Bib. are given in Denis, i. i, col. 842,
MS. ccxLiv, f. 195, sufficient to identify the tract with the English version.
Against them that say that holy writ should not or may not be drawn into
English, of Trin. Camb. 333, f. 26, printed infra. The reasons for identifying
the author of the tract with Purvey are (i) his long anterior connexion with
the defence of English Bibles, (2) his secret incitement of the debate would
explain Arundel's and Thorpe's attitude to him in 1407, (3) the literary style,
fondness of historical precedent, and dialect of the English version is alto-
gether consistent with the same authorship as the Gen. Prol. and the epi-
logues to the Lollard glosses, (4) the English version in the unique MS.
immediately precedes the Sixteen Points, which there is independent reason
for attributing to Purvey, (5) in the Latin version, which has a prologue not
found in the English, the author is shewn to be a Lollard scholar (who calls
the enemies of English Bibles "antichrist"), and he says he "is fighting
alone for the defence of English Bibles." At the date, shewn by references
in the Latin version to be between 1399 and 1405, the author could scarcely
have been any other doctor than Purvey: his very ignoring of the doctor
who actually debated for translations implies both that his own inspiration
was behind, and that the debating doctor was not a man of greater status
than himseiff — though a regent master. Purvey could not have debated
himself, as he was not regularly lecturing at Oxford, as both disputants were.
(6) The writer of the tract alleges a rarely quoted passage from Fitz Ralph's
De Quaestionibus Armenorum, in favour of vernacular masses, which
Purvey had already dwelt on in his defence of English scriptures. "Also
Ardmakan in the Book of Questions saith that the sacrament may well be
made in each common language: for so, he said, did the apostles," see
supra, p. 142. * Doct. i. 8.

19 — 2

292 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

Oct. 5, 1406, and according to Gascoign, it was he who stole the
university seal, and affixed it to the famous spurious letter of
the university in praise of Wycliffe, of that date. He seems to
have defended Wycliffe's teaching as far as he dared, and for a
time avoided punishment, though not suspicion. Thorpe stated
that this "Clerk of Oxford" preached a Lollard sermon at Paul's
Cross in 1407, which a certain "clerk Alkerton" attacked in a
sermon following, at which Thorpe himself was present.

"His sermon was false," said one of Arundel's clerks, "and that
he sheweth openly, since he dared not stand forth and defend his
preaching, that he then preached there." "Sir," answered Thorpe,
"I think that he purposeth to stand steadfastly therein, or else he
slandereth foully himself and many others, that have great trust that
he will stand by the truth of the gospel. For I wot well his sermon
is written both in Latin and in English; and many men have it, and
they set great price thereby. And Sir, if ye were present with the
Archbishop at Lambeth, when this Clerk appeared, and were at his
answer before the Archbishop: ye wot well that this Clerk denied
not there his sermon; but two days he maintained it before the
Archbishop and his Clerks." "That harlot" said Arundel, "shall be
met with, for that sermon. For no man but he, and thou, and such
other false harlots, praiseth any such preaching^."

About this time also Peter Payne was incited by "a certain
nobleman to debate at Oxford about pilgrimages, the Euchar-
ist," etc., with the friars, Walden and Befusis, who claimed that
" we came: we were there: but before we had even shaken hands,
Peter the Clerk disappeared, overcome with fear 2," — probably
of physical, not intellectual danger. This abortive debate was
a parallel with that held with the Dominican Palmer, on what
was, in 1405, a less dangerous subject. Peter Payne became
principal of S. Edmund's Hall in 1410, and retained that office
till 1414, during Oldcastle's rebellion: but in 1415 he was so
vehemently suspected of heretical pravity, that he thought it
advisable to flee to the Wycliffite university of Prague, where he
was made M.A. and had a long and prominent career •**. The fact
that he was a regent master at the date of the debate, and the
circumstances of his career compared with what is known of
Lollardy at the date, render it practically certain that it was he
who thus championed English Bibles in the schools.

1 Pollard. 159. 2 Doct. i. 8.

* Hisfiightexplains the existence of the DeFer.Bii. in a unique ViennaMS.

XI] PALMER AND PAYNES DEBATE 293

His adversary Palmer had, as has been seen, undertaken
earher the defence of Nicholas Hereford. We have a record of
the debate compiled from his side^, as well as those from the
Lollards' : it is in Latin, and sets forward first the Lollard argu-
ments, then at much greater length. Palmer's; then the re-
joinder, and then Palmer's counter-rejoinder. Palmer set forth
as firmly as Butler the unlawfulness of making any translation
whatever of the Vulgate; but his arguments, though based
chiefly on the inherent inferiority of the laity and their inability
to profit by Bible reading, are much less imposing than Butler's.
They are longer, more quibbhng, subtler, and often based on
arbitrary interpretations of biblical texts. His favourites are
*' Cast not pearls before swine " : " And it was said : Write it not,"
though he uses others much less familiar. The arguments of
Palmer's opponent, as stated in his tract, do not coincide
exactly with those brought forward by Purvey in the De Ver-
sione Bihliortim: but, on the other hand, Purvey's tract does not
profess to be, like Palmer's, an exact record of the debate : it is
the compilation of a scholar who had listened to " I know not how
many powerful arguments," and then composed his own treatise.
In some cases the arguments in Palmer's and Purvey's tracts are
the same. In both, the vernacular defender argued that the law
of Moses was recited in the ears of the people (Deut. xxxi.) ; the
apostles were unlettered men, but knew the scriptures; the gift
of tongues was given at Pentecost that men of all nations might
know the new law; S. Jerome translated the Vulgate; Bede
translated the Vulgate into English ^. Purvey, however, alleged
many more English historical precedents than his opponent
answered in his treatise. It is so unlikely that two such pro-
tracted debates took place, that Palmer was almost certainly
Peter Payne's opponent: but each writer on the debate seems
to have digested his opponent's arguments somewhat freely.

Purvey's tract gives several points of historical interest. He

1 See pp. 418-37.

- There is, however, no exact correspondence in the arrangement of the
points. The chief weight of Purvey's tract lay in the variety of precedent
he brought forward: while Palmer's report of the Lollard arguments
opposed to him makes it appear that they relied chiefly on a logical pro-
position: if the faithful are bound to carry out God's law, they must be
allowed to familiarise themselves with the book in which it is written.

294 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

mentioned that a Fleming, James Merland, " translated the whole
Bible into Flemish," referring of course to the version of Peter
Comestor; that Anglo-Saxon scriptures "be in many abbeys of
England," and that a London man had an English Bible '^'of
northern speech, and it seemed two hundred years old," — a
reference, no doubt, to some late Saxon manuscript of the
gospels. He recounted Arundel's sermon at queen Anne's
funeral, and the introduction of the bill against the English
Bible into parliament. He also referred to another Dominican,
who took part in the various heresy trials of the day, and
became superior of Blackfriars in London, — friar John Tille.

"But friar Tille," he says, "that said before the bishop of London,
hearing an hundred men, that Jerome said he erred in translating
of the Bible, — is like to Elymas, the which would have letted a
bishop, or a judge, to hear of the belief, to whom Paul said: O thou
full of all treachery, and of all false teaching, to turn the bishop from
the belief."

Friar John Tille, or Tylle^, must have preached a sermon against
translations of the Bible at Paul's Cross: and the incident shews
again the hostility of the friars, — in London, as in Zutphen, to
biblical translations.

The result of the wranglings of these two weighty doctors at
Oxford was increased private debating on the subject. "The
very cooks who sod the pottage made good their claim to read
the Bible in Wycliffe's English 2," and the result was so offensive
to Arundel, that he resolved to put a stop to it.

§ 7. There was still feeling at Oxford against episcopal inter-
ferences with the rights of the university : Wycliffe's books still
existed in considerable numbers: heretics from Prague came to

^ Archbishop Chichele wrote to Henry V, 16 Feb. 141 8, about the king's
request for a confessor to be sent to him, and about whom he had asked his
messenger to confer with Thomas Fishbourne (see p. 341) ; Fishbourne had
recommended Thomas Dyss, a friar preacher of Cambridge, "a good man
and sufficient therto, . . . and a spiritual, and plain to you without fantasy " :
and Fishbourne and the archbishop had conferred with "friar John Tylle,"
the provincial of the friars preacher, and obtained his leave to send Thomas
Dyss to the king; Oriq. Letters, EUis, H., 1824, Ser. i. i. 4. He had probably
been provincial as early as 1400-1404: see Little, A. G., in EHR, xxxiii.
497. Foxe, AM, III. 583, states that in 1423 John Tylle was one of the four
friars who tried the Lollard, William Taylor; Ussher, xii. 353 calls him
"quidem fraterculus Scilhus." See infra, p. 443.

2 Hen. IV, III. 433.

XI] THE CONSTITUTIONS OF I408 295

Oxford to study them^, and though a certain testimonial of the
university sent to the archbishop on behalf of Wycliffe is now
believed to be a forgery, reverence still existed for his intellectual
greatness. Walden states that the Lollards still incited the faith-
ful to read Wycliffe's works: " Oh," they say, "but he said many
beautiful things, — many useful things. Not all of them were
condemned." They asked how particular Lollards could be
heretics: "O that man," they say, "how can he be a heretic?
He preaches holily, he rebukes vices, he busies himself with holy
scripture, he proclaims Christ 2." Above all, Arundel knew that
discussion was proceeding at Oxford as to the Lollard tenets,
and that laymen and the unlearned were beginning to be
familiar with the idea that they could support their private
opinions by an appeal to the text of holy scripture ; and that it
was still contended in the schools that such an appeal was lawful.
He therefore went to Oxford, and summoned a synod of clergy
in November 1407, to settle particularly the question of English
Bibles and English propagandist tracts.

The provincial council of Oxford passed thirteen constitutions
dealing with Lollardy ^. The first reiterated prohibitions against
unhcensed preaching, "either in Latin or in the vulgar tongue,"
and, moreover, Hmited the subjects of the sermons of parish
priests, and other licensed persons, to those enumerated in
Peckham's constitution of 1281, the Ignorancia Sacerdotum.

By constitution V, no master of arts, or grammar master, was
in future to meddle with the sacraments, or any other theological
matter when instructing boys or other persons: nor was he to
explain holy scripture, except by explaining the text grammati-
cally, according to the good and ancient custom. No one was to
read " any tract of John Wychffe, or any other tract made in his
time, or composed more recently, or any that shall be composed,"
unless it were examined by the university of Oxford or Cam-
bridge.

Constitution VII is headed : That no one shall translate texts
of holy scripture into the English tongue. It is the passage which
misled sir Thomas More in his theory of the existence of pre-
Wyclifftte English bibles, and reads:

^ Jerome of Prague, 1401-2; George of Knychnicz and Faulfisch in 1407,
see p. 240. * Doct. i. 19, 20. ' Wilkins, in. 314-19.

296 ENGLISH BIBLE CONTROVERSY I384-I408 [CH.

Also, since it is dangerous, as S. Jerome witnesses, to translate the
text of holy scripture from one language into another, because in
such translations the same meaning is not easily retained in all par-
ticulars: even as 8. Jerome, although he was inspired, confessed that
he had often erred in this matter: therefore we decree and ordain
that no one shall in future translate on his own authority any text
of holy scripture into the English tongue or into any other tongue,
by way of book, booklet, or treatise. Nor shall any man read this
kind of book, booklet or treatise, now recently composed in the time
of the said John Wycliffe, or later, or any that shall be composed
in future, in whole or part, publicly or secretly, under penalty of the
greater excommunication, until that translation shall be recognised
and approved by the diocesan of the place, or if the matter demand
it, by a provincial council. Whoever disobeys this, let him be pun-
ished after the same fashion [as has been indicated above] as an abettor
of heresy and error ^.

This clause, from the direct reference to WycHffe, was prob-
ably directed expressly against the two versions of the Lollard
Bible: but it rendered illegal also the few partial and contem-
porary translations, undertaken probably under Wychffite in-
fluence, and described later 2. The constitutions ended by
lamenting that the university of Oxford had brought forth the
wild grapes of LoUardy, of which the fathers had eaten, "deem-
ing themselves skilled in God's law," and the children's teeth
were set on edge, throughout the whole Church of England. The
head of each college was therefore in future to inquire diligently
whether any student or inhabitant of the college was infected
by the poison of Lollardy.

This measure sufficed both to crush the influence of Lollardy
in Oxford, and put an end to Purvey's struggle to uphold the
lawfulness of the use of biblical translations. Purvey's own
history after the constitutions of Oxford in 1408 is uncertain.

^ Wilkins, iii. 317. Lyndwood, Provinciate, Appendix, p. 66. The modern
contention that textus cannot here apply to whole books of the Bible, or to
the whole Bible, has already been dealt with on p. 3 above. Cardinal
Gasquet's assertion that the mediaeval use of textus will not bear this sense
is not only untenable on the face of it, but is explicitly contradicted by
Lyndwood in his comments on this very constitution of Arundel. Lyndwood's
summary, for instance, runs "Holy Scripture must not be transferred into
the vulgar tongue, nor may such translations be interpreted until it has
been duly examined, under pain of excommunication and stigma of heresy."
And in his gloss, s.v. libii, he explicitly takes textus to refer to the whole
Bible, or whole books of the Bible 'ed. 1679, p. 286).

2 See pp. 302-18.

XI] PURVEY'S DEATH 297

The Lollard disendowment bill of 1410^ was partly, at least, his
work, for it was quoted by Lavenham when enumerating Pur-
vey's errors. The provision, inter alia, for " fifteen universities " to
be founded from the funds raised by disendowment, is interesting
as coming from him. His fate from now to his death is doubtful :
what appear to be his monogram and notes appear in a manu-
script belonging to a Lollard priest about 1427 2. That he suffered
imprisonment at some time seems likely, for Walden, who
collected the writings of Lavenham and others for the Fasciculus
Zizaniorum, said of Purvey between 1420 and 1426 "I have in
my hands now a book taken from John Purvey in prison^." He
ended his days in imprisonment or hiding *.

1 See p. 375. 2 See p. 378

* Doct. I. 619. Walden had finished the first two vols, of the Doct. in 1426,
the third in 1427. This was certainly a different book from the "libellum
haereticum" from which Lavenham collected Purvey's errors, FZ, 383,
407.

* The DNB states that he was imprisoned by archbishop Chichele in 1421 ,
relying on Foxe's quotation from Walden in AM, iii, 285; cf. Doct. iii. 732.
But the reference to Purvey's imprisonment under Chichele does not occur
in Doct., or FZ. An entry in Tunstall's Reg., f. 456, shews that the Lollards,
possibly incited by Purvey {Doct. i. xxviii), tried in London as well as
Oxford to obtain some license for the use of English Bibles. The entry
occurs after the mandate, dated 1526, for the handing over of the books
of Tindale's New Test., and, according to a marginal note, was "extracted
from a book now in the library of the friars preachers [Dominicans], of
London." It runs: "There were certain Greeks who came to England with
the emperor of Constantinople in the year 1401, which emperor stayed
with the lord king Henry, the fourth after the Conquest, in the second year
of his reign, and had with him bishops and priests. And when it was asked
of them, whether the common people, and the ignorant, in their countrj',
did indeed understand the scriptures, and the divine words [which they]
recited together with the learned, they said: 'No: holy scripture is edited
in a language totally unknown to the common people, and the common
people have a Greek which is totally different from that Greek in which
the divine word is retained.' And the king caused this to be preached at
Paul's Cross, on the Sunday next before Septuagesima [23 Jan. 1401], by
the master of the King's Hall in the university of Cambridge. This was
because, a little while before the king returned from Scotland and Wales,
many heretics had written various petitions to him, and even in the parlia-
ment which followed the feast of S. Hilary [21 Jan. 1401, Hen. IV, i. 168],
asking that it should be generally permitted to have the Law of God in
their mother tongue." For the emperor Manuel H and his visit to Henry IV,
Dec. 1400 — Feb. 1401, see Hen. IV, i. 161-3; for his daily mass according
to the Greek rite, Eulogium, RS, in. 388; for the wonder aroused because
knights as well as clerks took part in the Greek services, "because they
were in the vulgar tongue," Chron. Adae de Usk, 56; for Richard Dereham,
master of the King's Hall, chancellor of Cambridge, 1402, etc., Hen. IV,
ni. 351-

CHAPTER XII

Biblical translations contemporary with the
Lollard versions

§ I. The last quarter of the fourteenth century would almost
certainly have seen the production of some biblical translations
in England, even if Wycliffe had not turned the attention of his
followers to the popularisation of the biblical text. Continental
translations were produced or revised during this period in par-
ticular, though they were not scholastic undertakings on the
same scale of completeness and thoroughness as the Wyclifhte
Bible, and though they were not made for popular use. The
translations made for Charles V of France and the emperor
Wenzel, the revision represented by the Tepl manuscript, the
Tuscan gospels, possible translations made by the school of
Gerard Groot, all belong to the period of 1375-1400. None of
them were quite unglossed "translations according to the naked
text," nor was any effort made to popularise them; but their
production at this time justifies the surmise that in England too
some sort of translations would have appeared, probably glossed,
and perhaps at the order of the court.

This probability, together with the certainty that Wycliffite
influence pervaded Oxford during the years when the best
scholars of the period were being educated, renders it difficult
to say whether certain contemporary translations were produced
for expressly Wycliffite purposes or not. It was not yet forbidden
in England to translate the Bible, though no readable English
translations existed, and though the friars were declaiming
against such a translation from 1380 onwards. But it is difficult
to say whether, in the case of certain partial translations, ortho-
dox zeal alone would have produced the work. In any case, the
influence of the partial, contemporary, translations was negligible,
compared with that of the Wycliffite versions, judging from the
solitary or infrequent manuscripts which have survived to us, com-
pared with the very large numbers of the Wycliffite manuscripts.

CH. XII] TREVISA'S DIALOGUE 299

Moreover, there is no evidence at all that contemporaries
knew of the existence of these partial translations of the New
Testament, or could have distinguished between them' and the
WycHfiite versions. They were not made "before the days of
the late master John Wychffe," and they were therefore on
exactly the same footing of legahty as the Wychffite versions,
so far as the constitutions of Oxford went; except in so far, as
that Arundel dehberately meant to condemn the Wychffite
versions. There is no reason to suppose that any Lollard who
obtained a copy of the north midland glossed gospels would have
suspected that it was not a Wychffite copy, or would have
objected to it on that score; neither would he have objected to
the glosses, as they were little more than alternative renderings
of the text. Nor is there any evidence that the orthodox used
these glosses in preference to a Lollard text, for apparently they
never got into general circulation at all. Their chief interest is
hnguistic: but the question of the probable authorship of each,
by Lollard or orthodox, is of interest in its bearing on the
question of the attitude of orthodoxy to vernacular scriptures.

So much translation of classical Latin works was now being
accomplished by professional "turners," — chaplains generally
under royal or noble patronage — that the question arises whether
any such ever attempted a biblical translation, and, in particular,
whether John Trevisa ever did. His Dialogue between a Lord and
a Clerk is of great interest as shewing the effect of Wychffite
teaching on an Oxford student who did not become a Lollard;
and for the theory to which it gave rise, that Trevisa himself
produced a translation of the Bible ^.

Lord Thomas of Berkeley is never mentioned by contempor-
aries as one of the circle of Lollard knights, nor does any suspicion
of unorthodoxy attach to Trevisa, his chaplain. The patron's
interests seem to have been exclusively literary and scholarly,
and although the words of the "lord" in the Dialogue between
a Lord and a Clerk are actually those of Trevis^, they probably
represented Berkeley's sentiments. The Dialogue was written in
1387, when the controversy over English Bibles was already

^ Cf . Wells, 206. Trevisa translated a certain Latin sermon of Fitz Ralph,
archbishop of Armagh, against the friars, into English, which indicates no
love for them.

300 CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATIONS [CH.

begun at Oxford, and Trevisa and his patron possibly took the
view of the Wychfiite doctors on the matter, rather than that
of the friars. The question of the lawfulness of translating the
Bible is not raised directly in this dialogue; but the "lord," to
convince the "clerk" that the translation of so learned a book
as the Polychronicon was profitable, instanced the making of the
Septuagint and Vulgate translations, and certain Anglo-Saxon
ones. He also mentioned that the gospel and creed^ at mass
ought to be taught and preached to the people in English: but
he went no further than this. We do not find him saying that
lay people ought to be allowed to use English gospel books;
much less does he demand or refer to a complete EngHsh trans-
lation of the Bible.

There are no manuscript grounds for attributing any biblical
translation to Trevisa 2; but a statement, almost certainly mis-
taken, by Caxton, has been copied successively by many later
authorities. Caxton, in his Prohemye to the Polychronicon, de-
scribed the latter as

after the composing and gathering of Dan Ranulph, monk of Chester,
first author of this book, and afterwards Englished by one Trevisa.
vicar of Berkeley, which at the request of one Sir Thomas Berkeley
translated the said book, the Bible, and Bartholemew's De Pro-
prietatibus Rerum out of Latin into English 3.

Caxton wrote this in 1482 *, nearly a hundred years after Trevisa
had EngUshed the Polychronicon, in 1387, and there are no

1 "The gospel, prophecy, and right faith of holy church," Pollard, 206,
is probably a loose expression for the hturgical gospels, epistles and Old
Testament lessons, as they occurred at mass, together with the creed ; but
the lord was apparently referring only to a loose translation in a sermon, for
he says, " such English preaching is very translation." Cf . the contemporary
homiUes described pp. 315-18.

2 Cf.Mr A. W. Pollard's suggestionin Records of the English Bible, 1911, 2,
that Trevisa perhaps finished Hereford's translation after Baruch iii. 20.
But (i) there is no positive evidence of this. (2) It is most unlikely that, if
Trevisa took no part in the translation up to Baruch iii. 20, he would
attach himself to the Lollard scholars in the work after the attack on
them in 1382; such a work would have been undertaken only by one
thoroughly in sympathy with them. As to Trevisa's possible participation
in the first part of the translation, under Hereford's general editorship,
there is no evidence: but (a) it is doubtful whether he was in Oxford much
after 1376 (see John de Trevisa, Wilkins, H. J., Longmans, 1915, 72);
[b) there is no evidence that Trevisa was ever sufficiently in sympathy with
the Wycliffites to have undertaken with them a rather risky task.

3 Life and Typography of William Caxton, Blades, W., London, 1861, i.
194. * Id. II. 122.

XII] CAXTON'S GUESS 301

earlier references to Trevisa's having made a translation of the
Bible at all. Moreover, Caxton's assertion is accounted for by
his loose reading of the passage in the Dialogue, which he was
then printing^, referring to biblical translations: that he was
capable of making such mistakes is shewn by his miscopying of
the date in Trevisa's note, which described his finishing of his
translation ^', thus misdating the work by thirty years. But, much
more probably, Caxton was aware of the existence of Enghsh
bibhcal manuscripts: hke sir Thomas More, thought that since
they were good translations they could not be connected in any
way with Wychffe : combined this knowledge with the reference
to translations in the Dialogue : and offered here his own solution
to the problem of the authorship of the Wychfhte Bible. But
though the guess was sufficiently clever, it was made a hundred
years after the event, and cannot be made to accord with the
evidence that the versions which Caxton knew were undoubtedly
the work of the Lollards. That he was acquainted with any '
biblical manuscript which ascribed its authorship to Trevisa is
very unlikely, for if so it has disappeared completely, unknown
to Trevisa's contemporaries, or to any subsequent librarian or
scholar; moreover it would have been as unsafe for Trevisa to
sign his name to a biblical translation as for a Lollard. Caxton
knew that English Bibles were in existence, but he had no
possible means of knowing that the manuscripts went back '
originally to a version coupled with the heretical General Pro-
logue, and beyond that to one for which Nicholas Hereford was
largely responsible. His ascription of a biblical translation to
Trevisa seems to be merely an unlucky guess at the authorship
of the WycHffite versions, and is unsupported by any earlier
evidence.

All the assertions of later writers rest upon this statement of
Caxton. Bale and Pits followed him, Bale stating that Trevisa
translated the whole Bible, or both Testaments, at the request of
lord Berkeley, and even going as far as giving the incipit of this
translation: but that incipit coincides exactly with the dedica-

1 Caxton printed, see id. i. 191, his Prohemye, a table of contents, the
Dialogue (incipit, Sith the time that the great — ), the Epistle of Sir John
Trevisa, chaplain, unto Lord Thomas of Berkeley (an epistle dedicating the
Polychronicon) , and the Polychronicon. * Id. 195.

302 CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATIONS [CH.

tory letter at the beginning of the Polychronicon^. The trans-
lators of James I's Bible followed Caxton, as did later scholars,
the only one who tried to collect evidence on the subject being
Wanley'. The latter found a letter from "the prince" (the
future James II?), thanking lord Berkeley for a "very precious
book" of Trevisa's, which had been preserved at Berkeley Castle
for "neare 400 year." Some writers have conjectured that this
"precious book" was an English translation of the Bible, and
have searched for it in the Vatican Hbrary, without success^.

§ 2. Certain other translations, as well as the two versions
and the glossed gospels, were also produced by the Lollards,
notably a new edition of the English translation of the old Anglo-
Norman Apocalypse, a translation of Clement of Llanthony's
Unum ex Quattuor, and an edition of RoUe's psalter.

Three Middle-Enghsh forms of the Anglo-Norman Apocalypse
are found in fourteenth century manuscripts, the first dating
from about 1340-70*, and thus preceding the WycUffite period.
This seems however to have been unknown to the editors of the
second and third versions: the second is founded on a different
French text, and was used by the compilers of the third. This
third version is the so-called Wycliffite Apocalypse, for the

1 Bale, Script. Cat. 1557, p. 518. In Anglicum idioma, ad petitionem
praedicti sui domini de Berkeley, transtulit totum Bibliorum opus, sive
Utrumque Dei testamentum . Lib. 2. [Incipit] Ego, Johannis Trevisa, sacerdos.
The dedicatory epistle begins: /, John Trevisa, your priest and bedesman,
cf. Pollard, 209. Ussher, xii. 346, attributes a translation to Trevisa solely
on Bale's authority.

2 Dibdin's Topog. Antiq. 1810, i. 140, 141 n.; and John de Trevisa,
Wilkins, 101-109. The CHEL, 11. 74, 77 is inclined to attribute an English
Bible to Trevisa, partly on the grounds that when he translated isolated
texts, he did not quote the Wycliffite versions. But almost all mediaeval
writers quoted the Vulgate from memory, in Latin, or when translating
short passages, and this general fact is without significance in Trevisa's
particular case. The "precious book of Trevisa's" is on p. 77 stated to be
"some part of the Bible" apparently through a loose reading of Notes and
Queries, V Ser. x. 261-2. Cardinal Gasquet has stated that no English Bible
is now to be found in the Vatican library.

3 It is possible that Caxton's unconscious change of the dating of the
Polychronicon, from 1387 back to 1357, may have made him the readier to
believe that Trevisa had made his Bible earlier than "the days of the late
master John Wycliffe." It is not unreasonable to suppose that Caxton,
following Lyndwood like More, believed that there were mediaeval English
versions anterior to Wycliffe.

* Wells, 409; Panes, 1902, xxiv; FM, i. viii. Miss Panes is preparing an
edition of the first version for the EETS.

XII] THE LOLLARD UNUM EX QUATTUOR 303

translation of the text in it follows the later Wychffite version.
The commentary appears to be merely that of Gilbert de la
Porree: but some connexion of this version with the Lollards
seems to be shewn by Purvey's insertion of Gilbert de la Porree's
prologue before his version of the text of the Apocalypse ^

The circle of early Lollards at Oxford seems also to have been
responsible for the translation of Clement of Llanthony's Ununt
ex Quattuor, of which some fourteenth and fifteenth century
manuscripts survive 2. The text of the harmony, which is com-
posed of fairly long passages from the Vulgate arranged chrono-
logically, is said to be that of the early Lollard version : but the
exact relation between them has not been worked out. The
harmony is generally found with two prologues ^ probably
written rather later than the text, both of which are the work
of Purvey. One, beginning Saint Austin saith in the second hook
of Christian doctrine ^, is part of the prologue to the Lollard gloss
on S. Matthew^. The other. Our Lord Jesu Christ, very God and
very man^, is the second of the series of tracts in defence of
English scriptures mentioned earlier. Since the explicitness of
the references to the English scriptures seems to increase pro-
gressively in this series of tracts, it is likely that those which
occur first in the manuscript were actually written first, so that
the second is a fairly early one. This would agree with the

^ Test. Scots. This prologue was printed in the Strassburg Bible of 1480,
and some other early printed Bibles.

2 FM, I. x; Wells, 407; and see p. 273.

^ Apart from the translation of Clement of Llanthony's own prologue;
e.g., Harl. 6333 has: flf. 18 fi. the two Purvej' prologues; then, f. 23 The
prologue on a book made of four gospels. Clement, a priest of the church of
Lantonie, etc., which is a translation of Clement's prologue. This MS. was
copied from a Lollard original, since it includes the frankly Lollard second
prologue. It provides an English version of the gospels, epistles, and pro-
phecies, or "lessons" in church, since the places where these occur in the
harmony are marked, and other gospels, etc., not found in the work are
added; f. 298 "Because that certain gospels stand not in order, word by
word, in this story of One of Four, that must be sought in divers places,
wherefore hereafter [are] shown some of these gospels as they be read in the
church." 31 gospels follow, taken from the Wyclifhte later version. This
arrangement follows the directions in the Latin Unum ex Quattuor, which
is also preceded by a table of lessons, and has the beginnings of the liturgical
gospels marked; cf. Dd. i. 17, f. 614, for the Latin table, etc.

* FM, I. viii; in Gen. Prol. FM, i. 44-49, from Had. 6333.

* In Laud Misc. 235, and Trin. Camb. 36.
^ Printed FM, i. xiv; see p. 273.

304 CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATIONS [CH.

evidence of the text, and date the translation as of approxi-
mately the same date as the glosses on the gospels (certainly
complete before 1394), and earlier than the completion of the
later version.

The Lollards also re-edited Rolle's glossed psalter^, making no
doctrinal change in the text, but introducing their distinctive
teaching and attacks on the clergy into the commentary. In one
group of manuscripts the bulk and bitterness of the Lollard
matter added are much greater than in the other, and this group
is probably later in date. It is curious at first sight that the
Lollards should have added these polemics to Rolle's work,
while nothing of the kind is found in connexion with their own
biblical translations: but there were in reality good reasons for
their action. The Lollards advocated chiefly and distinctivelj^
the use of the unglossed text, and had the greatest reverence for
its integrity:

Let the church of England now approve the true and whole translation
of simple men, that would for no good in earth by their witting and
power, put away the least truth, yea the least letter either tittle of
holy writ, that beareth substance or charge^.

This seems to have prevented their combining their own trans-
lations with any of their polemical writings, except by waj^ of
prologue : for the glosses on the Lollard gospels are merely long
translations from the fathers. But in the case of Rolle's psalter,
the gloss was already there, and was not merely a close trans-
lation of the sayings of old doctors^: it was therefore more per-
missible to add to it. Not only this, but after 1408 Rolle's
psalter was the one authorised biblical book, and insertions in
that book were doubly desirable for purposes of propaganda.
Therefore, in contrast to the fresh edition of the Apocalypse, and
the translation of the Unum ex Quattuor, the Lollard edition of
Rolle seems to have been made for the spread of polemic, and
not merely for the increased popularisation of the biblical text.
§ 3. The most interesting contemporary translations of the
scriptures are those parts of the New Testament pubhshed by
Miss A. C. Panes. This "biblical version" consisted originally of
a "prologue," with the Pauline and catholic epistles, in a southern

1 Wells, 402. 2 Gen. Prol. FM, i. 58. ^ See p. 145.

XII] SOUTHERN EPISTLES 305

or Kentish dialect : but by about 1400 this was combined in two
manuscripts with a midland version of S. Matthew and the Acts.
Only five manuscripts, containing all or part of this combination,
have survived, so that the version was not widely spread; and
there is nothing to shew that there was an original connexion
between the two parts, the southern and the midland, thus com-
bined in two out of the five manuscripts'^. Miss Panes also prints
a second version of the catholic epistles, in a north midland
dialect. The midland Acts-and-Matthew, and the north midland
catholic epistles, would seem to be more probably connected
with the north midland glossed gospels and epistles, mentioned
later^. They had no connexion originally with the southern
epistles, prefaced by their interesting prologue, as printed by
Miss Panes, for had their writer known of the north midland
version, he would scarcely have made a fresh translation of the
catholic epistles. The two parts are found connected only in two
manuscripts, one of which is a copy of the other; while in one
out of the five manuscripts the southern epistles are found in
connexion with the early Wycliffite version of the gospels. It
may be taken as likely that any translator who set to work upon
the epistles knew that the gospels were available in English : the
Dutch translator of the epistles in 1408 stated in a prologue that
there were men who admitted that the study of the simpler part
of the New Testament, the gospels, might be useful, but who
needed to be convinced in argument that any profit could come
of translating the epistles^. It may be taken as axiomatic that
any teacher anxious to instruct the "lewid" would start by

^ Paues, 1904, xi-xv. Of the five MSS. used by Miss Paues, (i) dated
1400, has the midland Acts-and-Matthew, and the southern prologue-and-
episties, and (2) is a copy of it. (3) is the earhest MS., dating from before
1400, and has the midland Acts, only. (4) has the midland Acts-and-Mat-
thew, and a set of north midland catholic epistles, c. 1400. (5) written soon
after 1400, has all the epistles, hke (i) and (2), and the four gospels in the
early WycUffite version. It seems to be over-emphasising the connexion be-
tween the midland Acts-and-Matthew, and the southern prologue-and-
epistles, to term them a "bibhcal version," since they were merely combined
in one manuscript which was then exactly copied. On similar reasoning,
if (5) had been once copied, it would be as just to say that yet another
bibhcal version existed, consisting of the early Wychffite gospels and these
southern epistles.

^ See p. 310.

^ See p. 99.

D.w. B. 20

306 CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATIONS [CH.

translating the gospels, unless they were already available. But
there is no evidence that the original translator of these southern
epistles intended to combine them with the midland Acts-and-
Matthew, any more than with the Wycliffite gospels; if he knew
of the existence of any English gospel, as is likely, it was more
probably the early Wycliffite gospels that he knew of.

The prologue^ to these southern epistles is interesting. It
begins with a discourse on the Fall, and then proceeds:

(A) Sith every man is holden by Christ's law of charity to love his
brother as himself, ye, that have of God's grace more knowing than
we have, that be lewid and unkunning, be holden to teach us things
that be needful to the health of our souls, that is to say, what thing
is pleasing to God, and what displeaseth Him also. And I pray you,
pour charite, to teach us leA\'id men truly the sooth, after our asking.

(B) Brother, I know well, that I am holden by Christ's law to
perform thine asking; but natheless, we be now so far fallen away
from Christ's law, that if I would answer to thine askings, I must
in case underfonge^ the death. And thou wost well that a man is
holden to keep his life as long as he may. And peradventure it is
speedful to hold our peace a while forto that God voucheth safe that
His will be known : for now the world is full of wickedness, and men
have more desire to live in their fleshly lusts in sin than to please
God in forsaking sin. And I say thus in certain, that the comonalty
of the world hath forsaken God and His hests^ and herieth false
gods. . . .

(A) Lefe brother, I trow full well that the world liveth in much
wickedness of sin. But I trow that manj'- men, if they knew how
they might please their God, they ne would not spare for dread of
no man, ne for love neither, to do thing that were to His pleasing.
And I trow that our God be so good and so merciful, that if we
acknowledge to Him our sins, and forthink our trespass, and be in
full will to offend Him no more, than our hope is that He will forgive
us our trespass, if we ask mercy. . .thou ne shouldest nought spare
for dread of thy death to tell us a truth to bring us out of mischief
of the death of our soul. . . . Our Lord God also put Himself in peril of
death, and underfong the death, to bring us that were His servants
out of mischief of sin, and if our Lord put His soul for His servants,
it is skilful [reasonable] that one brother put his soul for his

^ The word is retained as it is used in Miss Paues' editions : actually the
tract occurs before the epistles in (i) and (2) (though absent in (5), the other
MS. of the epistles), and has no reference to the translation of the epistles.
The writer only gets as far as discoursing at length about Leviticus : but the
tract is unfinished, and some reference to the epistles might originally have
been intended. It is therefore only a "prologue " in so far as it occurs before
the epistles in two MSS. without referring to the work itself.

2 Undergo. 3 Commandments.

XII] THE "PROLOGUE" 307

brethren;. . .who that loveth his life in this world, he shall lose his
life. . . . And brother, I pray thee for the love that thou shouldst have
to God and to thy brethren, that thou answer truly to things that
I wiU ask thee, to health of my soul and other men's souls that be
lewider than thou art. And if thou wilt nought, our hope is that
God will inform us by some other true servant of His.

(B) Brother, thou hast aghast me somewhat with thine arguments.
For though thou ne have not been among clerks at school, thy skills
that thou makest be founded in love, that is above reason that clerks
use in school: and therefore it is hard for me to againstand thine
skills and thine askings 1.

The learned "brother" then describes the giving of the old
law on Mount Sinai, and in answer to the question of the in-
quirer, now and henceforth addressed as "sister," discourses
about the old law and the ten " hests " at greater length. He also
describes the moral and ceremonial law, and breaks off abruptly
in the middle of a sentence, without having mentioned the trans-
lations of the epistles, which occur next in the manuscript.

Certain points are clear from this prologue. The "brothers"
learned and "lewid," who address each other in it, are literary
characters, and do not at all imply that the author of the pro-
logue was himself a monk. The change from "brother" to
"sister" shews that the characters are a literary device to give
liveliness to the dialogue; like the "John" and "Richard" in a
contemporary dialogue concerning the friars-. It is much more
probable, a priori, that if any one asked the translator to under-
take this work, it was a "sister" of some sort; but this is no
evidence that the writer was himself a monk, for secular priests
were sometimes the directors of recluses or the smaller nunneries.
The general tone of the tract does not bespeak a monastic origin :
there is no apology on the grounds that translations would aid
the understanding of the divine office, or the practice of con-
templative prayer, much less the specific monastic virtues : while
the words of the lewid brother, that if the learned one will not
accede to his request, "our hope is that God will inform us by
some other true servant of His" are hardly those of one trained
in monastic obedience, whose duty would have been to accept
unquestioningly the will of his "superior." As a matter of fact,

^ Paues, 1904, 4-8.
2 See Trin. 333, § 4.

20 — 2

308 CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATIONS [CH.

the word "superior^" does not occur in the prologue, and the
appUcation of such a term to the learned brother is unjustified.
Thus the translations were quite possibly actually written at the
request of a " sister," but from the general tone of the tract, more
probably by some secular priest or Austin canon than a monk.
The author, from the insistence on the danger of death he
incurs by making a biblical translation, must have been writing
when English Bibles were considered dangerously heretical, —
that is, at a time when the Wycliffite versions were already in
circulation, and had aroused fierce opposition from some of the
orthodox, especially the friars. For actual heresy the writer
might at any date have expected the death penalty, since this
was the penalty at common law, and had been exacted even in
England^. In the Netherlands and the Empire many of the
Flemish Lollards, and other heretics, were being sent to the
stake just at this time, as they had been throughout the four-
teenth century. But it is hardly possible that the writer should
have expected the death penalt}' of heresy for translating the
Bible before the Lollards had fought the case for its popularisa-
tion, and had been fighting it for some little time. The allusion

1 Paues, 1904, xix, "brother superior" nowhere occurs in the text, and
is a misleading term for the " learned brother " in the prologue. A "superior"
has definite monastic meaning, but "brother superior" is not found at the
date as a monastic term. The lewid brother would have said " father" had
he owed the learned brother any sort of monastic obedience, as to a
"superior." The term "brother " does probably shew that the writer meant
his dialogue to take place between two members of some sort of a com-
munit}' (but just as likely a Lollard "school" as an orthodox order), rather
than between learned and lewid secular Christians. But this need not imply
that the writer was himself a monk, much less a "superior." Hereford
and Repingdon, it is true, were Austin canons, but there is no incongruity
in supposing that the early type of scholarly Lollard, of very mild un-
orthodoxy, should have thrown his dialogue into a form like that of this
prologue.

^ See Henry IV, iv. 314, appendix on the burning of heretics; for heretics
in England anterior to Wycliffe, see Inq. 1. 113, and for a better and fuller
account, Summers, 10-44; and for early cases of heresy in England, see
also CPL, III. 1342-62, 138, 227, 231, 253, 432, 565; CPP. I. 115, 216;
Kellaw, Reg. in RS, 62, i. 164; Hermits, 89. The editor of Wykeham's Reg.
II. 77-9, considers the apostate Benedictine, Margery de Rye, to have been
probably an early Lollard: but this is scarcely possible as early as 1369.
The Lollard apology, or 25 Articles, in which they offered in 1388-9 to
maintain certain theses to kings, lords and commons, refers to a possible
death penalty: they will defend them " Yea, by death, if it be justly deemed
lawful," Sel. Eng. Works, in. 457.

XII] PROBABLE LOLLARD ORIGIN 309

to the extreme of persecution in connexion with a bibhcal trans-
lation is exactly similar to the tone of some of Purvey's prefaces
to the glossed gospels, and even to the lament for the persecution
of Bible readers in the General Prologue^. This would date the
tract as written perhaps between 1388 and 1400, but scarcely
earher: this date accords also with the linguistic evidence, and
would allow for the union of these southern epistles and the
midland tracts in a manuscript of about 1400, Probably the
period could be still further narrowed to the five years immedi-
ately about 1388 : for the writer probably knew of the existence
of English gospels, but not of Enghsh epistles, — which points
to a date of about 1388, allowing for the writer to have left
Oxford about 1380-5.

The writer was not an extreme Lollard, and yet there are signs
that he was in sympathy with Lollard teaching : perhaps through
a previous education at Oxford. The translation or instruction
in the Bible was to be for the use of the "lewid," — a very doubt-
fully orthodox aim; it was a translation of the bare text, without
glosses, which was considered particularly unsafe; the dwelling
on the giving of "Goddis la we" on Sinai somewhat bespeaks
Lollardy, as does the readiness to expound the details and mean-
ing of the ceremonial law of Leviticus to the lewid; and the
reference to obtaining forgiveness by confession of sins to God
alone sounds suspiciously Lollard. But the writer was certainly
not a convinced Lollard, of the Purvey type: possibly he had
come in contact with VVycliffism at Oxford, for he certainly
sympathised with the Lollard aim of "uncovering" the scrip-
tures to the lewid, but he thinks at first that " peradventure
it is speedful to hold our peace a while, forto that God voucheth
safe that His will be known," though he yields to the lewid
brother's request later. His first thought was, clearly, to wait
and see whether the English Church should settle the matter of
translations by condemning or approving them.

If the writer were southern or Kentish, as the editor of the
edition believes 2, it is much more likely that he should have
been at Oxford, than at any midland or north midland cathedral
theology school, for such schools were mainly attended by local

^ FM, I. 30, 43, 57. * Paues, 1904, i n. i, xvii.

310 CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATIONS [CH.

students. One of the five hands in Nicholas Hereford's original
manuscript appears to be Kentish, and, curiously enough, it is
that of the portion Leviticus to Judges vii. 13^, which suggests
that the writer may have been the same as that of the prologue.
If such was the case, familiarity with this matter, the Jewish
moral and ceremonial law, may have accounted for the long
dissertation upon them to the lewid brother in the prologue,
written later. This is conjecture: but the probability that the
writer of the prologue was acquainted rather with the early
Wycliffite gospels than with the rare north midland ones, is
serious. As a general result, the examination of the prologue
and the dialect of the epistles would seem to shew that the writer
was a priest of the south country, verj' doubtfully a monk or
canon regular, who had been influenced by Wycliffite views,
but had remained substantially orthodox, and that he wrote his
prologue about 1388-95.

§ 4. Another group of translations, never widely copied,
seems to have been contemporary with the early Wyclififite
versions, and to have been due to a north midland author, or
group of authors. One of these works has a prologue which
seems to connect the translator with the Wycliffite circle at
Oxford, but the others have no prologues, and therefore no
evidence as to orthodox or heterodox origin, except in so far as
they may be connected in the manuscripts with the one first
mentioned.

The gospels of SS. Matthew, Mark and Luke exist in this
north midland dialect, with a gloss translated mainly from, Peter
Lombard^. A passage from the Latin text is given, then the
translation, then the gloss, which is quite orthodox and un-
original. The comment on S. Matthew has a prologue :

Here begins the exposition of Saint Matthew. . . . This work some
time I was stirred to begin of one that I suppose verily was God's
servant, and oft times prayed me this work to begin, saying to me,
that sithen the gospel is rule, by the which each Christian man
ought to live^, and divers has drawn into Latin, the which tongue

* Bodl. 959; FM, I xlvii. The prologue as it stands, incomplete, would be
a far more suitable introduction to a translation of Leviticus, which it dis-
cusses, than the epistles, which it never mentions.

2 That on Matthew in two MSS. ; those on Mark and Luke together in a
single one. The latter have no prologues. FM, i. x.

' This is a typically Lollard phrase: cf. Wycliffe's argument, pp. 242-3.

XII] NORTH MIDLAND GOSPELS 311

is not known to each man but only to the learned: and many lewid
men are, that gladly would con the gospel, if it were drawn into
English tongue, and so it should do great profit to man's soul, about
the which profit each man that is in the grace of God, and to whom
God has sent cunning, ought heartily to busy him. Wherefore I,
that through the grace of God began this work, so stirred as I have
said before, by such word, thought in my heart, that I was holden
by charity this work to begin: and so this work I began at the
suggestion of God's servant, and greatly in this doing I was com-
forted of other God's servants divers, to such time that through the
grace of God I brought this to an end. In the which drawing I
suppose there is nothing set against the faith, against health of soul,
or else against the worship of God.. . .Wherefore I beseech. . .tbem
that this work read, that for me they pray the mercy of God, . . .and
that he at whose suggestion I this work began, and they that this
work read, and all Christian men with me, through doing of that
which is written in this book, may come together to that bliss that
never shall end^.

The reference to " one that I suppose verily was God's servant"
points strongly to Wycliffe, and to the translator's having been
for a time one of the Wycliffite circle at Oxford, probably at the
time when Wychffe was writing the De Veritate, about 1378, or
earher, and before the actual Wycliffite versions had been taken
in hand. Arundel says that Wycliffe "filled up the measure of
his malice by instigating a new translation of the scriptures,"
and this sentence in the prologue reads as if he had "instigated"
its translator among others. His Latin works for seven or eight
years before his death all demanded a popular knowledge of the
Bible that led inevitably to the "instigating" of a translation.
The phrase "one that I suppose verily was God's servant"
suggests that all might not hold him so, and is just one that
might have been expected of a scholar who knew that certain
teachings of his master had lately been condemned, and who
did not therefore wish to prejudice his own work by openly
naming the man who had inspired it. It is curious that this man
speaks of his inspirer and other helpers as "servants of God,"
and that the lewid brother in the above mentioned prologue used
the same phrase for one who should be willing to translate the
scripture for him : " and if thou wilt nought, our hope is that God
will inform us by some other true servant of His." The phrase^

1 FM, I. X. ^ AM, IV. 227.

312 CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATIONS [CH.

was thus used by the Lollards, one of whom hoped that a
certain bishop would not "trouble the servants of God, but
will let them be in quiet." Moreover, the reason put forward
by the "servant of God" who urged the making of the trans-
lation is exactly Wycliffe's teaching, which he reiterated in all
his later works. "The gospel is rule by which each Christian man
Qught to live" compares exactly with Wycliffe's advice to all
Christians

to study carefully the gospel in that tongue in which the meaning
of the gospel was clearest to them: for all the faithful are bound to
follow the Lord Jesus Christ,. . .and since the deeds and teaching of
Christ are more clearly expressed in the gospel than elsewhere, it is
obvious how much the careful study of this book profits the faithful i.

" The gospel is the rule by which all Christians ought to live " is
a typical Lollard proposition, often found in Purvey's writings.
Nevertheless, there is no evidence in the prologue that the north
midland translator had become a Lollard of an advanced type :
he probably took up work at a distance from Oxford, completed
his translation there, and lost touch with the Wycliffite circle.

Besides these glossed gospels, a north midland version of the
Pauline epistles^ has survived in a single manuscript. Here the
Latin is given in single sentences, followed by a very literal and
stiff translation, followed then by occasional short glosses that
are not much more than alternative renderings of the word, or
explanations of it. There was also the north midland unglossed
version of Acts and part of S. Matthew, mentioned earlier, found
combined about 1400 with the southern epistles; the editor does
not mention that the portion of S. Matthew was connected with,
or drawn from, the north midland glossed S. Matthew, and it
seems to be a freer rendering than the text of that gloss. There
was also a set of north midland catholic epistles, unglossed^, and
found in a single manuscript combined with the portion of
Matthew and Acts. It is not at all certain that all these works
were connected in origin, though they are in the same dialect,
but such may have been the case. In any case, the glossed
gospels appear to be the work of one man : the glossed Pauline

1 See p. 245.

2 Paul. Ep. 1-274.

^ Printed as an appendix, Panes, 1904.

XII] PERHAPS WRITTEN AT LINCOLN 313

epistles are perhaps connected with him, for they occur only in
the manuscript of the glosses on SS. Mark and Luke: and the
unglossed Matthew, Acts and cathoUc epistles appear to have
been part of another version, or a revision of the text of the
glosses.

The modern editor^ of the glossed Pauline epistles does not
enter into the question as to whether the translator was the
same as the compiler of the glossed gospels: she considers it
likely that the work was made as an aid to preaching, or for
teaching in some divinity school. But we have no reason to
assume that between 1380 and 1400 lectures in cathedral
divinity schools were given in English : in absence of evidence,
it is much more likely that, like those at the university, they were
in Latin. Moreover, the lectures at such schools do not seem to
have been upon the biblical text. They seem to have formed a
course of elementary theology, based on Peter Lombard : though
later the council of Constance ordered that the lecturer in theo-
logy should expound the Sunday epistles and gospels, for the
improvement of the sermons of those, mainly ordinands, to
whom he was lecturing^. The Lollard Purvey demanded that
scholars at grammar schools should learn to construe the biblical
text, and if a teacher from Oxford chose himself to introduce
such an innovation, in a theology school, such a book as these
Pauline epistles would have been exactly what he required: the
book is practically a construing of the Latin text into English.
There is no need to assume that the hypothetical teacher taught
LoUardy in a divinity school, or that he actually used his glosses
in delivering his divinity lectures. But he may have had his
students in mind in preparing them. The similarity of the north
midland dialect in this group of translations rather suggests a
common local origin: and the newness of the departure, and
scholarship of the glossed gospels, rather suggest an important
local divinity school as the place of origin. Putting these infer-
ences together, and till further evidence is collected, the cathedral
school of Lincoln might be suggested as the place of origin ; the
dialect is not northern enough for York. But such preoccu-
pation with the biblical text would have been "advanced"

^ Miss M. J. Powell. * See p. 104.

314 CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATIONS [CH.

for the day, and due very probabty to the influence of lecturers
who had come under the influence of WjxUfiite ideals during
their studies at Oxford.

The teaching of Wycliffe for the five years or so before his
condemnation in 1382, as embodied in the De Veritate and some
of his other tracts, cannot have been without influence on
students who were at Oxford only for a time. Wycliffe's teaching
remained strong in his own university for years after his con-
demnation, but it must have passed out also with students who
left Oxford and obtained a prebend in some cathedral, or
actually lectured in its school. They would, without becoming
active Lollards, remember Wycliffe as "holden of full many men
the greatest clerk that they knew then living : and therewith . . .
a passing ruely man, and an innocent in his living," and his
followers as " the most godly wise men that I heard of or knew^."
Of such a type was certainly the author of the north midland
glossed gospels: and of such a type was quite probably the
author of the southern prologue and epistles, who faced such
risk in the making of his translation. In not a single case is there
any evidence that any of these translations were made before,
or apart from, the influence of Wycliffe: the fact that they con-
tain nothing unorthodox in the text or glosses proves nothing,
for the Wyclifiite versions themselves contained nothing un-
orthodox. The north midland glossed gospels are almost cer-
tainly the earliest of the group, for the translation was literal
and the gloss considerable: but this was made, judging from the
prologue, under Wycliffite inspiration. It is not in the least
likely that the much freer and unglossed north midland trans-
lations of parts of the New Testament preceded the others, in
lack of direct evidence to that effect: for this would be an in-
version of the usual order in which translations were made at the
date. Nor does the earliest manuscript containing part of it
appear to date from earlier than 1380-1400^. So that the
reasons for believing that any biblical version, or part of it^,
substantially preceded the Wycliffite ones, are small: the north

^ Pollard, 119.
^ Paues., 1904 xiii.

' Apart from the translation of the Anglo-Norman Apocalypse, which
dates from 1340—70, see p. 302.

XIlJ HOMILIES ON GOSPELS 315

midland glossed gospels are almost certainly the earliest, and
though it is quite possible that they actually antedate the so-
called early Wycliffite one by a year or two, they were written
through Wycliffite inspiration.

But in any case, these contemporary translations are chiefly of
Hnguistic interest, for they were so rarely copied that they were
unknown to contemporaries. They would come under the ban
of the council of Oxford in 1408 as having been made in the days
of the late master John Wycliffe, or since, without having re-
ceived any general approbation from a bishop.

§ 5. It will be remembered that Anglo-French and Middle-
English verse paraphrases of the Sunday gospels had been made
in England between 1250 and 1350. These had been originally
accompanied by homihes or expositions, and in the later manu-
scripts the translation of the text itself was dropped. There are
three interesting sets of prose translations of the Sunday gospels,
with English homilies upon them, all of which belong to the last
quarter of the fourteenth century: that is, were contemporary
with Wycliffe's teaching, or were made shortly after his death.
There is no manuscript or other evidence for dating any of them
earlier than c. 1380, and the set which was probably the earliest
seems to date from about that time. The three sets, all of which
contain translations of the biblical text differing from both the
early and the late Wycliffite versions, are the prose translation of
Robert of Greatham's Mirror, the Lollard sermons on the Sunday
gospels connected more or less closely in origin with Wycliffe
himself, and a contemporary set of sermons apparently uncon-
nected with the Lollards. The manuscripts of the Wycliffite
sermons are fairly frequent^: but of the other sets only four and
two respectively are known: so that neither set had anything
like the popularity or influence of the Wycliffite versions. The
translation of the text of the gospels was probably made in each
case at sight from the missal or Vulgate, and is an independent
version.

The prose translation and homilies which are modelled upon

Robert of Greatham's Mirror contain, apparently, no Lollard

teaching or phraseology, and are found in four manuscripts'-,

^ Wells, 469, mentions 19.

* Harl. 5085, Magdalen Coll. Camb. 2498, and C.C.C. Camb. 282, all late

3l6 CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATIONS [CH.

all dating from the end of the fourteenth century, or the begin-
ning of the next. The translator made a fairly close translation
of Robert's prologue^ and made use of the subject matter of his
homilies, but he apparently made his own translation of the
gospel text, no doubt with Robert's verse translation before
him^. The version is not literal, like the early Wycliffite version,
but much freer, and suitable for recitation in the pulpit: the
translation of the whole Sunday gospel precedes the homily. In
translating the prologue the Middle-English editor omitted such
of the French lines as would not apply to his English treatise^,
so that his version was not a mere English copy of the French
prologue: but he chose to retain the hues (quoted above ^),
where opposition was anticipated, and to render them somewhat
stronger. This would seem to indicate that he personally ex-
pected censure from some quarters, and was writing some time
soon after 1382-4, when the controversy over Enghsh scriptures
had begun.

My name ne will I nought name, for the enemies that might hear
it, and might draw your hearts from good, that had will to hear it.
For it is the manner of the enemies for to be grudging and annoyous,
and will blithely coniect^ the words of holy writ, and will tell it on
their manner, and ne let nought for to blame other; the wicked
ween for to amend it, for to blame the good, and coniect them®.. . ,
For this werk I do sooth for me and for all men. For all ne have
nought all holy writ. Such hear the gospel and read it, that ne
understandeth nought it, what it saith. And for to do all men for
to understand it, in God I dare take this work in hand, that all men
may understand openly what the gospel teacheth them.

It would appear therefore that this translation and homilies
were made about the time of the beginning of the translation

fourteenth century, and Holkham Hall MS. early fifteenth century. See
H. E. Allen in Modern PJiilology, xiii. April 1916; 741, Paues, 1904, xiv;
and extracts from the prologue, with a specimen of the translation of the
biblical text, in FM, i. xx. The MSS. quoted may go back to an earlier
original, but the language does not suggest it, cf. also Parker Coll. 52,

MS. CCLXXXII.

^ See passages compared in Mod. PJnl. xiii. 742: in the whole prologue
the resemblance is close.

^ A comparison of the gospel text as printed in FM, i xx with Greatham's
Mirror in Gg. i. i shews no special resemblance in the biblical passages.

3 Rom. XV. 298, 11. 1-6, 68-70, 199-200. * See p. 150.

^ Cast down, for deprimer. See NED, coniect.

* FM, I. XX ; the last lines are not a translation of Greatham's lines in
Rom. XV. 300, 11. 137 S. ; for the first, see 11. 129 ff., for the last. 11. 275 S.

XII] WYCLIFFITE HOMILIES 317

controversy, by a scholar who made no departure from orthodoxy
in his teaching, but was somewhat apprehensive as to the re-
ception of his work ; he does not seem to have been acquainted
with the northern Enghsh verse homihes, founded on his own
model. The Franciscan Butler, and the Dominicans Palmer and
Tylle, would doubtless have condemned his work.

The Sunday sermons printed as Wy cliff e's^ are not preceded
by translations of the Sunday gospel, but the complete trans-
lation of the gospel is given in the course of each homily, which
explains a few verses at a time. The text here also is indepen-
dent, and if the sermons are Wycliffe's own, is his first essay in
the translation of the gospel. To have quoted from the early
literal Wyclififite version would have been impossible in a
passage meant for recitation in the pulpit, and there are no
grounds for believing that the second version was begun before
his death. But there are serious grounds for doubting whether
these English sermons are in Wycliffe's own words, whether they
are more than his followers' version of his sermon notes ^ com-
piled for the benefit of his itinerant preachers. The matter of
the sermons, however, follows closely Wycliffe's teaching in his
authentic Latin polemical works. Probably the text of the
gospels was translated, if not in the original sermon notes by
Wycliffe, by Purvey or some Wycliffite before the second
Wycliffite version was made. In one case, two sermons are given
on the gospel beginning Egressus Jesus de Templo^, and the text
of the gospel is twice translated, — each time differently: which
confirms the general probability that throughout the translation
was made at sight, and not from any earlier translation.

The third set of homilies, apparently orthodox in matter'', has
yet another English text for the gospels themselves. This is

^ Sel. E)2g. Works, i.

- A priori, Wycliffe is unlikely to have spent his time writing out ver-
nacular sermons; and the references to persecution in some of the sermons
seem to point to their being edited at a time later than Wycliffe's death :
of. the references to the death penalty for heresy, Sel. Eitg. Works, i. ix;
also the reference to a number of translators in id. 11. 393, "some men would
say it [the gospel] in their mother language, as they kunnen."

3 Sel. Eiig. Works, 1. 235; 11. 393.

* FM, I. XX ; MSS. Kk. 6. 2, Kk 6. 28. The Camb. Univ. Lib. Cat. states
that Kk. 6. 2 is the work of a Wycliffite, but on what grounds is not appar-
ent: a general examination of the MS. does not suggest it. Both MSS. date
from about 1400.

3l8 CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATIONS [CH. XII

given continuously at the beginning of each gospel, but only in
one of the two manuscripts. The text is closer to that in the
Wycliffite sermons than to either of the Wycliffite biblical ver-
sions: but the resemblance is due probably only to the com-
parative freedom of which the translator felt justified in making
use, in a work meant for the pulpit, and not textual study.

Thus of the three late fourteenth century English "plen-
aries," or gospels and homilies, one is certainly Wycliffite, if not
Wycliffe's, and the other two are of apparently independent
origin, though the type of sermon approximated to that which
the Lollards desired. The Wycliffite work was copied fairly
widely: but the other two sets of homilies, judging from the
surviving manuscripts, had little influence. The compilation of
such a work would have been unlawful in the fifteenth century
without episcopal license: and there is no evidence that such
was ever given.

CHAPTER XIII

Bihle reading by the orthodox, 1408-1526

§ I. The provision of the synod of Oxford in 1408 that no one
was to translate, or use the translation of, any text of holy scrip-
ture, until the translation should have been approved by the
diocesan bishop or the provincial council, seems to imply as
possible in future, either the issue of some authorised biblical
translation, or the approbation of some private individual's
work. If this really floated before the minds of Arundel and his
clergy, such a measure was never taken, — to the surprise of
sir Thomas More a century later^. Friar Butler roundly asserted
that the whole hierarchy together had no power to grant a general
license for lay people to read a particular translation, and the
council of Trent so far endorsed his opinion that lay people were
only allowed to use translations by the individual license of their
confessors. But it is unlikely that Arundel had any definite
intention of taking the lead in such a matter, when no previous
English or continental bishop had ever issued an approved trans-
lation, and when such an action would have clashed with the
conception of the clergy as the teaching branch of the Church.
No bishop actually took such a course before the Reformation.
The clause may have been intended merely to sanction the old
custom of indi\ddual license by the confessor: or to placate
liberal feeling within the Church: or to shew a scholarly recog-
nition that translations were not, in themselves, wrong. Which-
ever was intended, no breach in ancient custom ensued: no
translation received official sanction-, but kings and nobles were
allowed to possess English Bibles as they had earlier been
allowed to possess Bibles Historiales. For the first half of the
century however there is not only no evidence for lay ownership,

1 See p. 8.

* Gairdner's note, i 109 " Wycliffite Bibles authorised by bishops" is ex-
ceedingly misleading, as implying a general license. There is no single known
case even of an individual obtaining episcopal license to use one, much less
of a general license to use a particular version. See p. 7 n.

320 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH.

but some evidence that English scriptures were too closely con-
nected with heresy for even the greatest to wish to possess them ;
and it is probable that such manuscripts as were written for use
by the orthodox at this time were used by nuns rather than lay
people. But when fifty years or so had passed after 1408, and
seventy from the death of Wycliffe, confessors and doctors had
no means of identifying the actually Lollard versions submitted
to them. There was no reason why they should not have ap-
proved each manuscript merely on the grounds of its accuracy
as a translation : as they probably did, in a few cases. They had
not the linguistic skill to know whether the manuscript had been
made before the days of Wycliffe or not, even if they knew the
exact provisions of the synod of Oxford. Broadly speaking, it
is likely that nuns were the most numerous orthodox users of
English Bibles between 1408 and 1526, but that between about
1450 and 1526 exalted lay people sometimes possessed them, in
complete ignorance that they were Wycliffite. Devotional teach-
ing never laid any stress on their use by lay people in England,
and there was certainly no general emphasis on their use even
by nuns, though certain nunnery chaplains advised or allowed
it. Not only was Bible reading never advised by the hierarchy
as a duty, but there is evidence that it was generally regarded as
forbidden^. The attitude of sir Thomas More's "Messenger"
shews that this was so in the sixteenth century, and More would
probably have caused quite as much surprise in the fifteenth by
stating, on the authority of the synod of 1408, that Bible-
reading in general was not forbidden.

Enghsh versions of the psalms, however, seem to have been,
from the first, an exception to the rule against the unlicensed use
of biblical translations. A certain number of people possessed
English primers in the fifteenth century, and these books usually
included certain psalms^. Two partial verse translations of the
psalms were being made just at the time of the synod of Oxford :
those of Lydgate^, the B-^nedictine of Bury, and Brampton*, a
Franciscan recluse in the west of England. Lydgate could

^ See pp. 326-9.

^ See p. 338 n. Addit. 36683 combines the primer with the Wychffite
psalter.

' Psalm 51 and others: see Ashmole, 50, § 39; 48, § 58.

* Trin. Coll. Descrip. Cat. 11. 80; Wells, 404, misdates as 1414.

XIII] VERSE PSALTERS 321

hardly have been unaware of the prohibition, though Brampton,
who wrote in 1413, might well have been: but neither seems to
have obtained episcopal license for his poems. Probably the
exemption of Rolle's psalter in 1408^ led to the toleration of all
prose texts of the psalter, while for loose verse translations no
license was ever regarded as necessary. '

§ 2. There is indeed a piece of evidence that Arundel was, in
1408, seriously considering the provision of some English book
in which the faithful might study the life of Christ, with due
guidance from the doctors. He seems to have decided that an
actual translation of the biblical text, however well accompanied
by glosses, was impossible, because it afforded the heretics
grounds for argument, and for the appeal to isolated texts ^. He
therefore fell back upon a translation of the most popular gospel
harmony of the middle ages, the Mediiationes Vitae Christi then
ascribed to S. Bonaventura. The parts dealing with the passion
had been used in English verse and prose in the fourteenth
century^, and the whole work was translated into several ver-
nacular tongues at about this date. Arundel in 1410 authorised
for general use an English prose translation ; and this date, to-
gether with a sentence in his authorisation stating that he did it
"to the confuting of all false Lollards and heretics," suggests a
counter-move to the Lollard efforts to publish the gospels in
Enghsh. The commonness of fifteenth century manuscripts, and
references to this work in catalogues and wills*, shew that it
became the orthodox reading-book of the devout laity, as
Arundel probably intended. In any case, his authorisation of
the book shews that the licensing, for instance, of a translation
of the gospels, would have been a perfectly possible event at the
date, and it is significant to note what book he did, in fact,
authorise for general use instead.

Nearly all the manuscripts of this book copy a Latin memoran-
dum of Arundel's license, and have notes about the translator
and his methods. j

1 The author of the Sion Myroure thought it superfluous to translate
verses of the psalms when the nuns could use Hampole, see p. 339. Ashmole,
61, has another poem, like Brampton's, on the penitential psalms, by a
certain Rate, c. 1 475-1 500.

- See his words to Thorpe, p 354. * See pp. 152, 174.

* See p. 342.

D. w. B. 21

322 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH.

About 1 4 10 the original copy of this book, the Mirror of the Life
of Christ, in English, was presented in London by its compiler, to
the most reverend father in Christ, and lord, the lord Thomas
Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, for inspection and due examina-
tion, before it was made public^. And he, when he had inspected it
for some days, handed this book back to its aforesaid author, and
with his own voice commended and approved it in detail, and by
his authority as metropolitan, he decreed and commanded that it
should be made public as catholic, to the edification of the faithful,
and the confutation of all false heretics or Lollards^.

The author was the Carthusian Nicholas Love, prior of Mount
Grace, at Ingleby, Yorkshire, as is explained by other notes in
^ the manuscript, and one manuscript actually possesses the trans-
lator's monogram^. The Carthusians of the fifteenth century
were active in the spread of religious literature, and regarded this
as a duty which they owed to the laity, whom they could not, in
their strict seclusion, serve by other active works*. Nicholas
Love's book was not a close translation of the whole of the
Meditationes Vitae Christi, but a free translation of such parts
as he considered specially suitable for meditation by simple lay
people, with additions and explanations of his own. He marked
with the initial B those passages which were translated from
pseudo-Bonaventura, and with the initial N the passages he had
added himself^, and he followed his original in distinguishing
whether the passage narrated was biblical, or founded only on
the opinions of the doctors:

S. John said that all the things that Jesu did are not written in
the gospel. Wherefore we may, to stirring of devotion, imagine and
think divers words of Him, and other that we find not written, so
that it be not against the belief: (as S. Gregory and other doctors
say that holy writ may be expounded and understanden in divers
manners, and to divers purposes, so that it be not against the belief,
or good manners). And so what time or in what place in this book
is written, that thus did or thus spake our Lord Jesu, or other that
are spoken of, and it may not be proved of holy writ, or grounded
in express saying of holy doctors, it shall be taken none otherwise
than a devout meditation that it might be so spoken or done^.

^ Libera communicata : of. p. 215, Spec. Vit.; p. 325, Fruit of Redemption.
^ C.C.C. Camb. 142, f. 2a, etc.; Love's Mirrour, preface.

* Brasenose, e. 9. For an article confusing this work with Deguilleville's
pilgrimages, see Trans. Bibliog. Sac. vii. 163 ff.

■* See Chartreux, travaux de, V, 11. 605.

^ Love's Mirrour, 6; C.C.C. Camb. 142, f. 2a.

* Love's Mirrour, 9; cf. Bonav. Op. 1609, 533.

XIII] LOVE'S MIRROUR

)23

The original Meditaiiones from which Nicholas Love trans-
lated contain, on the whole, far more meditation and non-
biblical matter than actual gospel narrative, — and a much more
detailed account of the nativity, epiphany, fasting and tempta-
tions, passion, resurrection and ascension of our Lord than of
His teaching or ministry^ Nicholas Love followed the same
method, though he sometimes omitted long meditations applic-
able only to a religious, and added others o^his own. The general
result of his translation was to add meditations of his own on the
early and final events of our Lord's hfe, and still further to
abridge the ministry and parables. When he had completed the
narrative and meditations down to the temptations, he preface"d
his abridgement of his original with the remark :

But for alsomuch as it were a long work, and peradventure tedious
both to the readers and the hearers hereof, if all the process here of
the blessed life of Jesu should be written in English so fully by
meditations as it is yet hitherto, after the process of the book before
named of Bonaventura in Latin: therefore hereafter many chapters
and long process that seemeth little edification in as to the manner
of simple folk, that this book is specially written to, shall be left,
until it draw unto the passion, which with the grace of Jesu shall
be more plainly contained, as the matter that is most needful and
most edifying 2.

Nicholas Love's own passages are generally of much beauty
and devotion, and though the work which he produced was far
indeed from being a literal harmony of the gospels, its popu-
larity among the orthodox in the fifteenth century can be well
understood. In a long prologue he met the Lollards on their
own ground by recommending the study of the life of Christ :

^ The chapters are headed according to the order of events in the narra-
tive, and there is no trace that the order of the Sunday gospels was in any
way followed.

^ Love's Mirrour, loo. Many of the chapters omitted from the Medita-
iiones form a treatise on the active and contemplative life, following on the
discourse on Martha and Mary where it occurs in the narrative. Medit. pp.
368-78, or chapters 45-58, are thus omitted by Love: but he actually shps
into admonitions of his own to religious, though he states elsewhere that
he is writing expressly for lay people; cf. especially, Mirrour, 98, his account
of Carthusian meals; and 165, Of silence, "and other virtuous exercise that
longeth to contemplative living and specially to a recluse, .. .whoso will
more plainly be informed and taught in English tongue, let him look the
treatise that the worthy clerk and holy liver Walter Hilton, the canon of
Thurgarton, wrote in English by grace and high discretion."

21 — 2

324 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH.

For there is no pride but it may be healed through the meekness
of God's son: there is no covetise but that it may be healed through
His poverty, nor wrath but that it may be healed through His
patience : nor malice, but that it may be healed by His charity. . . .
And for this hope and to this intent, with holy writ also are written
divers T^ooks and treatises of devout men: nor only to clerks in
Latin, but also in English to lewid men and women and them that
be of simple understanding. Among the which are written devout
meditations of Christ's life, more plain in certain parts than is ex-
pressed in the gospel of the four evangelists^. And as it is said, the
devout man and worthy clerk, Bonaventura, wrote them to a religious
woman in Latin. The which scripture and writing, for the fructuous
matter thereof stirring especially to the love of Jesu, and also to the
plain sentence to common understanding, seemeth among other
sovereignly edifying to simple creatures: the which, as children,
have need to be fed with milk of light doctrine, and not with sad
meat of great clergy and of high contemplation. Wlierefore, at the
instance and the prayer of some devout souls, to edification of such
men or women is this drawing out of the foresaid book of Christ's
life written in English, with more put to in certain parts, and also
Avith drawing of divers authorities and matters, as it seemeth to the
writer hereof most speedful and edifying to them that are of simple
understanding.

The Mirrour was not only written to supersede the Lollard
translations of the gospels, but it also refers in places to the
Lollard errors. The loosing of Lazarus from the grave-clothes is
compared to that of the sinner, "dead and bounden by the grave-
clothes of sin," by confession and absolution: and the scribe
emphasised the point by writing in the margin: "Nota de con-
fessione et absolutione, contra Lollardos." Again, in narrating
the institution of the Lord's Supper, Love wrote:

These terms I touch here so specially because of the lewid Lollards,
that meddlen them against the faith falsely. And moreover the faith
of this excellent sacrament ... is conf ermed by many manner of
miracles, as we read in holy books, and hear all day preached and
taught. But here laugheth the Lollard, and scometh holy Church
alleging of such miracles 2.

* Love's Mirrour, 8. Besides the biblical narrative, the pseudo-Bona-
ventura devotes chapters 11. and iii. to tbe strife in heaven between Mercy
and Justice, Truth and Peace (much exploited in later miracle-plays and
Piers Plowman), and the life of our Lady and her seven petitions, "known
from her revelations of it to S. Elizabeth." The other non-biblical details
at the visitation to S. Elizabeth, the Nativity, etc , are only such as might
be supplied by a devout mind picturing the scenes shortly described in the
gospels. * Love's Mirrour, pp. 180, 208.

XIII] OTHER GOSPEL HARMONIES 325

Not only did Love deal with the matter in this passage, but he
added a separate tract on "the highest and most worthy sacra-
ment of Christ's blessed body " at the end of his Mirrour, to the
special confutation of the Lollards on this point 1. On the other
hand, the fact that the manuscript purported to be a life of
Christ in English seems to have induced some Lollards to possess
themselves of it, for in one manuscript the section about the
sacrament of the altar is scratched through, and a marginal note
says: "Do not beleue thys foleshnes^."

Orthodox approval of Bom.veninTdi'sMeditationes as a reading-
book for the devout is confirmed, not only by the Spanish trans-
lation made at this time, but by a French one. Jean Gallopes,
dean of the collegiate church of Saussaye in Normandy, trans-
lated what he called the "golden book of the life of our Lord
Jesus Christ according to Bonaventura," and dedicated it to
Henry V, and his uncle the duke of Exeter, regent of France at
the time, as well as presenting a copy to Henry V^.

Though Love's Mirrour of the blessed life of Jesu was much the
commonest in the fifteenth century, two other English lives were
composed. Fairly early in the century a Carthusian of Sheen
composed an English Vita Christi'^, and apologised in the preface
for his work as partly unnecessary, since "a man of our order of
Charterhouse" had turned Bonaventura's Vita Christi into
English; he mentioned also the existence of an English "School
Story," or Historia Scholastica, and said that his two chief
authorities were Comestor and Lyra. His narrative keeps closer
to the words and order of the gospels than Love's Mirrour. The
other English life was composed at the end of the century, "for
your ghostly comfort that know no Latin °" by Simon, the
anker of London Wall, who was enclosed in the city church of •
All Hallows. It was approved as orthodox by Fitzjames, bishop

^ Cf. especially Mirrour, 321, for his criticism of Wyc'iffe and his "great
clergy" and doctrine of the sacrament.

2 Camb. Trin. 367, f. 128. There are, apparently, Lollard notes in
Univ. 123, since Coxe in Cat. Cod. Oxon. attributes the work to "quendam
Wiclefistam."

* Parker Coll. 43, C.C.C. Camb. Descrip. Cat. i. 510.

* The Speculum Devotorum, written for a nun, Gg. i. 6, owned in 1517 by
John and Margaret Farmer.

* Published by Wynkyn de Worde in 15 14 as The Fruit of Redemption,
Hermits, 180.

326 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH.

of London, in 1506, before it was " made public," and was printed
four years later by Wynkyn de Worde. Lollard or protestant
heresy was just then increasing again in numbers and import-
ance, and this license of a second book deahng with the hfe of
Christ is a curious parallel with that of Love's Mirrour.

It is very strong evidence, again, of the attitude of authority
in England to vernacular scriptures, in these early days of
*. printing, that several editio(fis both of Love's and Simon the
Anker's meditations on the life of Christ should have been
printed^, while no printer ventured to produce any EngHsh
bibhcal books, or even a set of glossed Sunday gospels. Manu-
scripts were there to print from, as easily accessible as Love's
Mirrour. If the difficulty were the authorisation of the text, for
instance, of the Sunday gospels, it would have been possible for
Fitzjames to read and approve one, as he did Simon the
Anker's work; if licenses to read English scriptures had been at
all freely obtainable by the devout, such a book would certainly
have been printed. The non-printing of such books goes to
corroborate More's Dialogue, since it shews that the constitutions
of Oxford were generally understood to forbid the reading of
English scriptures by the laity.

§ 3. The strongest evidence for this is contained in the ac-
counts of various Lollard trials, where the witnesses frequently
deposed that they had heard the accused reading in a book of
the gospels in English, or some other biblical book, and therefore
knew he was a heretic^. But there is also other confirmatory
evidence, which emphasises the exceptional character of those
cases where exalted lay people obtained licenses to have Enghsh
Bibles.

Dives and Pauper is a long tract of moral exhortation in
English, written by an author who did not allow his name to
appear, though his views were quite orthodox and untainted by
LoUardy. He was engaged on the work as early as 1405, though
he possibly did not complete it till 1409^, when Arundel's con-

^ Love's by Caxton c. 1488, Pynson 1495, Wynkyn de Worde 1517 and
1525; Simon's by Wynkyn de Worde in 15 14, 1530, 1532; see Hermits, 182.

2 See pp. 353, 366.

3 Dialogue of Dives and Pauper, Pynson, London, 1493; also 1536 ed.
For date of the tract, see Richardson, H. G. in Notes and Queries, nth Ser.
IV. 321.

XIIl] DIVES AND PAUPER 327

stitutions of Oxford had been published. WTien discoursing on
the ten commandments he remarks — not altogether approvingly
— that "now men say that no lewid folk should meddle with
God's law, or the gospel, or holy writ, and that men are forbidden
to have God's law in their mother tongue^," — a sentence shewing
the general impression, and therefore the practical effect, of the
Oxford constitutions. Just as Innocent III did not completely
prohibit vernacular translations in his letter to Metz in 1199^
but referred later to this letter as haxing forbidden them, so the
wording of the Oxford constitutions, however guarded in strict
law, was naturally taken to mean that Bible reading was for-
bidden to the masses, especially in \dew of the actual practice
of the hierarchy.

Not merely that, but the mere possession of EngHsh books of
piety without a Ucense was sometimes alleged as forbidden by
the 1408 constitutions, — an exact parallel to the suppression of
aU German books of devotion by the imperial edict of 1369, for
fear of the connexion of German books with heretical errors. The
abbot of S. Albans governed a great monastic pecuhar, and ruled
the vicars of the monastic parishes in place of the bishop. In
1426-7 he held a synod for these vicars, to put forth ordinances
for the prevention of the spread of Lollard}', and in the account
of the synod, the mere possession of Enghsh books is mentioned
as a symptom of heresy:, the ordinances were expresslj' passed
" against all false preachers and possessors of books in the vulgar
tongue^."

Since the occasion and cause of no small part of this injury' is the
possession and reading of books which are written in our vernacular
tongue: we command and enjoin. . .that all whom ye shall in future
know to frequent the reading of books in the vernacular, as to have
any such books at home, and especially those which might furnish
material or occasion for erroneous and malicious opinions, ye shall
be solicitous to the utmost of your power to take away these books
from such their possessors: and, if your powers seem to you in-
sufficient to procure the final casting out of these books, then ye
shall expressly signify concerning the said books to him who has
fuller or more final authority in the matter*.

^ See Richardson, Parish Clergy of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,
in RHT, 3rd Ser. vi. loi, 322.

* See. p. 33. * Aniundesham, RS, 28, i. 223.

* Id. 225.

328 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH.

The books aimed at were no doubt chiefly Lollard treatises:
but the books which above all furnished the Lollards with
"material for erroneous and mahcious opinions" were English
translations of parts of the Bible, and the constitutions were so
worded as to include these books. One heretic who recanted
confessed to the unlicensed possession of an English theological
or devotional book as one of his chief faults:

I, William Redhead, maltman, of Barnet, . . .confess that I had in
my possession a certain book in the vulgar tongue, in which book
are inserted many errors ; . . . I confess that I have gravely offended
God and the Church in that I have kept such a book in the vulgar
tongue without the previous license and examination of the ordinary^.

A mandate of bishop Stafford of Wells is more significant still
of the usual interpretation of the Oxford constitutions. On
August 24, 1431, he issued from Dogmersfield a general mandate
to his diocese, which made no mention of Lollard writings, or
the spread of any Lollard movement in the diocese, and did not,
in fact, expressly deal with Lollardy at all. Yet in one clause he

forbade that any one should presume in any manner to translate
holy scripture, or any part of it, into the English tongue, which is
well-known to be our vulgar tongue, nor to [possess] books of scripture
translated into the English tongue 2,

without any reference to the possibility of obtaining a special
license to do so. Thus in the diocese of Bath and Wells at least,
the possession of English translations of the Bible or any part
of it, was expressly forbidden by the bishop^, without his
apparently perceiving that he was going beyond the strict letter
of the synod of Oxford. This could hardly have been the case if
licenses to read English Bibles had been at all frequently granted
by other bishops, even to the nobility. Not only this, but

1 A mundesham, 1.228. Cf . the charge against certain Colchester possessors
of English books in 1414, EHR, xxix. 102.

^ The register is unprinted, but the late canon Scott Holmes kindly sent
me the following extract, with other information: "Ne quisquam sua
temeritate sacram Scripturam seu aliquam eius partem in linguam Angli-
canam, quae nostra vulgaris esse dinoscitur, ullo modo transferat, neque
libros Scripturae in ydioma Anglicum translatos possideat, per octo dies a
tempore monitionis et inhibitionis continue numerandos. . .."

^ Capes, 128 "when John Stafford in 1431 threatened with excommuni-
cation any who translated the scriptures or copied such, he made no reserve
in favour of any accepted version."

XIII] STAFFORD'S PROHIBITION 329

Stafford succeeded Chichele as archbishop of Canterbury in 1443,
so that his view of the matter became that of the primate of
England. His mandate seems in fact to confirm the hypothesis
that for forty or fifty years after 1408 the possession of EngUsh
Bibles by the great was much less frequent than their possession
of French Bibles Historiales had been in the fourteenth century.

The biblical Chester plays, moreover, lapsed in the first half of
the fifteenth century, and were solemnly revived and played again
in 1447^: it is possible that the omission in the interval was due
to the suspicion roused by the Lollards against all biblical narra-
tives in Enghsh. The verse "banns" to the play, which were
written later but which were possibly founded on some earlier
prologue or banns 2, expressed the belief that the "stories of the
Testament at this time [were] in a common English tongue never
read nor heard," and the author wonders that a monk should
have composed them.

Finally, coming nearer to sir Thomas More's own day, an
account of the condemnation of a Lollard, written by a cleric,
states it as a matter of course that the translation of the Bible
is forbidden by the Church. Richard Hun was condemned in
1511, and the scribe who took down the articles of his condemna-
tion wrote under article XHI:

He defendeth the translation of the Bible in English, and the holy
scripture into the Enghsh tongue, which is prohibited by the laws of
our mother, holy Church^.

More was actually present at part, at least, of Hun's examina-
tion, and the words of the article bear out the contention of the
Messenger in the Dialogue, that the laity at large regarded the
reading of English Bibles as forbidden by the Church.

§ 4. There is no evidence that English Bibles were used,
except in very rare cases, by the clergy in the fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, or that parish priests were now universally
competent to study the Vulgate, and instruct their parishioners
out of it. Inventories and wills shew that books were relatively

^ Chester Plays, 2-9.
■ - The strong approval of the monk, Randall Hignet, and monk-like
practices (banns, 11. 20, 21) suggest the -fifteenth century rather than 1592,
the earliest MS. of the banns: while the dialectal forms of the banns appear
sometimes earlier than 1592.

3 AM, IV. 186.

330 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, 1408-1526 [CH.

much commoner and cheaper in 1450 than in 1350 : whereas in
' 1350 a cathedral dignitary might own perhaps a dozen books, all
of which he would mention in his will, in 1450 he might not
mention his books separately at all, because he had as many as
twenty or thirty. The educational system was the same, at the
schools and universities. It is true that grammar schools were
becoming more frequent, and apparently cathedral schools were
now regularly equipped with separate grammar and theology
masters; again, a new educational instrument was being con-
structed in the chantry schools and colleges^; but there is still no
evidence of the use of biblical translations in any kind of school.
The organisation of abc and grammar schools remained
roughly the same^; the provost and three chaplains of Jesus
College, Rotherham, founded in 1480, said daily masses and
taught grammar and theology to any scholars who came to
them, but no mention is made of any teaching on the biblical
text^. The universities still laid comparatively little stress on
the study of that text, though William of Wykeham laid down
in the statutes of New College in 1400 that one of the first aims
of the foundation was to be the study of theology^. The candi-
dates for admission into monasteries seem not to have received
much education before admission, and to have been taught no
more afterwards than in the thirteenth century: consequently,
when the educational leyel of seculars slightly rose, monastic
ignorance was considered the more reprehensible. The abbot of
S. Albans appointed a grammar master from outside c. 1430 to
teach the young monks Latin : but S. Albans was a great abbey
and still numbered eminent scholars among its monks ^. But
other abbeys were less careful of learning, or less able to pay a

^ Research Ed. 17, 42. The earliest cases of chantry priests engaged in
teaching printed by Mr Leach are those of two chaplains at Saffron Walden
in 1423, and one at Southwell 1475-84: in both these cases the chaplains
taught for fees, at their own discretion, and not as one of the duties imposed
by the founder of the chantry. For the latter, see Jesus College, Rotherham,
For chantry priests who had been doing teaching in 1538 see Chapels,
Chantries and Gilds in Suffolk, Redstone, V. B., Suffolk Instil, of Archaeol.
XII. pp. 31, 34, 35, 36: and note the number of chantry priests described as
"of small" or "of very small" learning, also VCH, passim.

^ Cf. Ipswich in 1477, Educ. Char. 423.

3 Id. 425-9; Research Ed. 21. For a biblical student of S. Bartholomew's
hospital, Smithfield, see J. Stow's Survey of London, 1842, 139.

* Educ. Char. 351. ^ Amundesham, i. no, 11. 305.

XIII] FIFTEENTH CENTURY CATALOGUES 331

grammar master, and archbishop Warham commented severely
in his visitation of 15 11 on the ignorance of the Canterbury
monks :

Also, a skilled teacher of grammar shall be provided to teach the
novices and other youths grammar. For in default of suc^ instruction
it happens that most of the monks celebrating mass and performing
other divine service are wholly ignorant of what they read, to the
great scandal and disgrace both of religion in general and of the
monastery in particular^.

In face of such evidence it will be obvious that English Bibles
might have been useful, not only for lay brothers, but many of
the monks : but it is curious that, though monastic catalogues
compiled between 1408 and 1526 are quite numerous^, there is
not a single case where a catalogue included any English biblical
book, — except, of course, RoUe's psalter. We do indeed find
that the Charterhouse at Sheen possessed a Wycliffite Bible,
presented by Henry VP, and that the Dominicans at Cambridge
possessed one at the Dissolution*: but these are the only known
instances. The only English Bibles which monastic libraries
possessed, were, according to the catalogues, Anglo-Saxon
gospel books or homilies on the gospels: there is not a single
instance of an English biblical book, which does not, on investi-
gation, turn out to be a Saxon book, like the gospels at Durham,
or the two manuscripts of parts of the Old Testament mentioned
in an inventory of S. Paul's cathedral in 1402^. This shews that
sir Thomas More, when he spoke of "English Bibles fair and
old" as possessed by "many old abbeys," was thinking mainly
of Anglo-Saxon books, or those of the communities of women ^
Beyond his apologetic assertion, which does not of course refer
exclusively to the libraries of monks, there is a striking lack of

^ Educ. Char. 445. 2 gee appendix, Old Eng. Lib., Savage, E. A.

^ FM, I. xlvii; Bodl. 277, see p. jn.

* Leland found a "biblia in lingua vernacula" there in 1539; Collectanea,
III. 16, 51; Bibliom. 261.

* One Bible, as far as the prophet Zechariah, one ending with the book of
Job, described as " veteris Anglicae littexdLe, " Archaeol. i 451 ; these go back
to the 1295 inventory, id. 496; and see references, supra, pp. 137-8.

* Like Sion, Barking, etc. For nunneries possessing English books, see
p. 336; among men's houses, Leicester in 1492 had a French Comestor and
Passio Christi, five secular French books, and no English ones; Canterbury
c. 1480 a few French and one English book, Monk Bretton an English
Legenda Aurea and a Scale of Perfection.

332 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH.

evidence that English as distinguished from Anglo-Saxon biblical
books were to be found in monks' libraries. Thus neither in the
schools or libraries of the monasteries, nor in those for the
training of secular priests, is there any evidence for the use of
English translations of the Bible.

From the wills of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries it
may fairly be presumed that all bishops and most cathedral
dignitaries now possessed a Vulgate, as the nucleus of a small
library; so also did many fellows of Oxford and Cambridge
colleges. There are also more recorded cases of the possession
of Vulgates by parish priests: but these were rare as compared
with those who possessed service books only. It may be worth
while here to recapitulate that some 7578 wills dating from be-
fore 1526 have been examined^, and that of these, 338 wills
bequeathed service books, and no Vulgates. Between 1384,
the death of Wycliffe, and 1526, 69 of the testators bequeathed
Vulgates : of these, 24 were lay people, generally of noble birth,
23 were bishops or cathedral clergy, 6 were connected with the
universities, and 16 only are described as rector, vicar, or
chaplain. Neither the higher nor the lower clergy had ever
possessed French Bibles, save very rarely, before the Wycliffite
period; for such books, never very numerous in England, had
been the property of the well born laity. It is not surprising
again that there should be no evidence that the clergy possessed
such in the fifteenth century, when French had generally ceased
to be used, except in nunneries and monasteries.

Clerical or monastic Bible study still frequently took the form
of compihng skeletons and lists. Henry Hawkins, of Great
Dunmow, compiled a history of the Old Testament from Adam
to Ptolemy Philopator, chiefly from Comestor and Josephus,
about 1450^; and a little later an anonymous scribe, "consider-
ing the length and hardness of holy scripture, and namely of the
ground of the letter historical, the negligence also of some that
might labour and will not," compiled a list of kings, descending
from Adam through patriarchs, judges, kings and prophets to
Edward IV of England^. A good deal of translation from Latin
and French works was also accomplished in this century, but

1 See appendix, p. 391; for a French Bible, VCH London, i. 225.

2 Trin. Oxford, 29. ^ c.C.C. Oxford, 207.

XIII] BIBLE OWNERS : PRIESTS 333

rather of patristic and mystical works than those dealing with
the biblical text. Books called Examples of holy scripture, con-
sisting of short paragraphs, generally arranged alphabetically,
of different personages, virtues, etc., mentioned in holy writ, were
relatively common^. About eleven cases have been found where
the secular clergy owned or bequeathed English devotional
books, — like those of Rolle, Hilton, or Nicholas Love's Mirrour^:
one of them was ' ' an English book of the exposition of the gospels. "
§ 5. There are five known cases after 1408 when orthodox
priests possessed English translations of the Bible, two of which
are known to be Wychfiite texts. The first is a Dominican friar
and hermit of Newcastle-on-Tyne, John Lacy, who possessed an
early version of the Wycliifite New Testament, written about
1400, without any prologue or heretical matter in it^: he may
have obtained it before 1408, or have obtained license to use it.
He bequeathed also in 1420 an English hours of our Lady*. The
second is that of Roger Lyne, chantry priest in the church of
S. Swithun, London Stone, who owned a collection of the Sunday
epistles and gospels, unglossed, in the early Wycliifite text,
either before or after 1408^. The third is that of William
Revetour, a chaplain of York, and for his day, a great collector
of English books. He bequeathed in 1446 an English book of
miracle plays, and English legendary, the Prick of Conscience, a
book on the pater noster, and "a certain book treating of the
Bible, in English^." If this is an expression for a complete
English Bible, it would have been an exceptionally valuable
book for a simple chaplain to possess: but the possession of a
book of miracle plays is so unusual as to suggest that William
was personally connected with their production at York, and
needed an EngHsh Bible for the instruction of the players. The
fourth case is that of Roger Walton, a priest who owned part

1 Cf. Bernard, Cat. Nos. 2087, 2502.

2 TE, II. 34, 151, 219; III. 91, 199, 165 n.; iv. 280; Pembroke Descrip. Cat.
xxviii; Trans. Essex Archaeol. Soc. v. 293; TV, in. 444; Trin. Camb. 352,
f. 134.

3 Rawl. C. 258, in FM, i. xlix.

* S. John's, Oxford, 94. * Had. 1710.

* TE, II. 117, "quendam librum tractatum [sic: perhaps scribal or
copyist's error for tractantem] de Biblia in Anghco." The book was left,
apparently, to a layman: and it appears doubtful whether either Revetour
or the legatee had any other license to use it beyond that of their confessors.

4 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH.

of the later Wycliffite New Testament in Henry VIIFs reign^;
and the fifth, Stephen Tomson, a notary pubhc, who possessed
an Old Testament with the General Prologue in 1519^.

[a) There is no doubt that between 1408 and 1526 certain
lay people, of rank eminent enough to be the "friends" of sir
Thomas More, possessed EngUsh translations of the Bible. They
were allowed to do so, as earlier nobles had been allowed to
possess French Bibles : though there is no evidence whatever that
the Church " encouraged " them to do so. The practical certainty
that no complete translation existed except the Wycliffite, and
the knowledge that non-Wyclifhte partial translations were
very rare, renders it likely that, in the majority of cases, those
who possessed English biblical books possessed them in the
Wyclifhte versions, though without the tract known as the
General Prologue. The Wycliffite text itself was not heretical,
and not signed by any author's name: any "doctor" who was
willing to Ucense his penitent to use an English Bible at all,
would have licensed a Wycliffite manuscript at almost any time
after 1408, in complete uncertainty that it was Wycliffite. In
four cases we have evidence that the owners of Wycliffite manu-
scripts had suspicions as to the lawfulness of retaining them, and
deliberately sought to disguise their provenance in order to pro-
tect their valuable books: one is a manuscript where the scribe
has dated his work as being finished in 1408, and a contemporary
hand has altered the date to i3o8'^: another, one of the Lollard
glosses on the gospels, to which a contemporary hand has added
as title: "the work of Thomas Aquinas, extracted from divers
doctors, and translated into the mother tongue^."

Some of the manuscripts written after 1408, and still preserved
to us, must have been written for Lollard use, as the evidence of
Lollard trials shews. The facts that they have no name, and no
Lollard comments, do not disprove their Lollard ownership, for

^ FM, I. xlix: a MS. written apparently after 1500.

2 Id. I. liv.

" FM, I. xlviii, Fairfax, 2. The change of date must have been done
purposely, to safeguard the MS. from the provisions of 1408, "in the days of
the late master John Wycliffe, or since."

* Bodl. 143, f. 222 b: the MS. which has the Lollard passage, interpolated
among the glosses of the doctors, carefully erased (ff. 159 b, 160). See for two
other ante-dated MSS., C.C.C. Oxford 20, and Rylands Cat., Guppy, H.,
1907, ID.

XIII] BIBLE OWNERS ! LAY PEOPLE 335

to write such name or marginal comment in the manuscript was
dangerous. Many of the epistle and gospel books belonged prob-
ably to Lollards, for Purvey argued in one of his tracts that men
ought to have the epistles and gospels translated for them: in
fact, he took up here exactly the attitude which certain German
orthodox teachers took up a century later^. The Lollards went to
mass, however unorthodox might be their theory of the sacra-
ment: Purvey wrote that "the sacrament on the altar is verily
Christ's body sacramentally and spiritually, and more other
manners than any earthly man can tell," and he was shocked at
the suggestion of Richard of Armagh that the sacrament might
lawfully be made in English. The Lollards never devised a new
sacrament of their own, like the consolameniwn of the Walden-
sians ; and the evidence that they ever had celebrations of the
Holy Communion, conducted by unconsecrated priests, is scanty.
Their midnight gatherings were always, apparently, for Bible
reading and exposition, and there is no suggestion in Lollard
literature that they repudiated the obligation to hear mass on
Sundays and holy days-. There is no incongruity, but much
probability, in the idea of Lollards possessing gospel and epistle
books in English : and among those mentioned by Forshall and
Madden which have no distinctive mark of ownership, either by
Lollard or orthodox, there is no antecedent probability that
they were owned by orthodox lay people. The probabiUty rather
is, that they were owned bj^ Lollards, or by nuns.

There is no recorded will of a lay person between 1408 and
1526 which bequeathes an English Bible, — though there were
two before, — the Lollard sympathiser, Thomas duke of Glouces-
ter in 1397, and a Bristol merchant in 1404^. Two existent
manuscripts, however, once belonged to English kings: Henry
VI *, who presented one to the Carthusians of Sheen, and Henry
VH''. The first was copied from a Lollard manuscript with the
heretical General Prologue: but the scribe copied only the first
chapter; the second was without it. It is significant that in the
days of real Lollard danger neither Henry IV, nor that pious
king, Henry V, possessed an English Bible: though Henry V

^ Cf. p. 129. ^ Apart from their general repudiation of canon law.

* See pp. 288-9, TE, i. 271, and appendix, p. 398.

* FM, I. xlvii. * Id. I. xxxix.

336 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH.

used Lydgate's poems on the psalms in his private prayers, and
had them sung in Windsor chapel at evensong when he was
present^. One other manuscript belonged to a lay woman: it is
the only known case of non-royal lay ownership after 1408, and
it is the only case where some sort of a license appears to have
been granted. It is a later version of the New Testament, and
on the fly-leaf is a note to the effect that the owner's mother
bought it, and that it was "overseen and read" — not by a
bishop — but by two doctors, whose names are almost erased 2.

Thus of the known cases of ownership of English Bibles after
1408, five were priests, and three lay people, — two of them kings.
This is a very small number compared to the remaining wills, or
to the cases of Lollard ownership, which, even in the trials
already printed, are mentioned more than eleven times^.

{b) The evidence that nuns were sometimes licensed to use
EngUsh Bibles is more explicit. It is still scanty, for it is found
only in connexion with two houses, Sion and Barking, at about
1430 and 1400 respectively, and these cannot be taken as alto-
gether typical of the majority of English nunneries at the date.
Both were large and importa.nt houses, the nuns of Sion especi-
ally being drawn from the noblest and best educated classes,
while there was at the date of the foundation of Sion some con-
nexion of personnel between the two, for a Barking nun became
the first Sion abbess. The majority of English nunneries were
smaller, and the nuns less well educated, than at Sion. But
though the direct evidence of Enghsh Bible reading is small, it
is supported by continental analogies. The Bible was pre-
eminently regarded as a book of meditation for the devout, and
the Dominican Gottesfreunde had been the first orthodox to
advise the use of translations: while two German fifteenth cen-
tury nunnery catalogues mentioned them *.

In England Walter Hilton had suggested that lay people aim-
ing at the mixed life, and practising contemplation, should read

^ Annates of John Stow, London, 1631, 342; Trin. Coll. Descrip. Cat. 11
80, MS. 600.

'^ FM, I. Ixiii, Ashburnham, 3. The note appears to read: "A lytel boke
of. . . viii. 1. vi. s. viii. d. and hit. . .a holy man. . .was over seyne, and redd
be Doctor Thomas Ebb. . .al and Doctor Ryve. . .my modir bought hit."

3 See pp. 356-70. MSS. mentioned by FM and containing the Gen. Prol,
were also probably Lollard. * Seep. 11 1.

XIII] BIBLE OWNERS I NUNS 3Z7

the sayings and examples of our Lord, presumably from the
Latin gospels: so that it is probable that in the fifteenth century
English Bibles were used to some extent in the largest and best
instructed English nunneries. It was not the case that the best
instructed nuns used Latin Bibles, and the most ignorant,
English ones : but that the best instructed nuns were allowed to
use English translations, perhaps by themselves, perhaps to help
in the understanding of the Vulgate, while the smaller nunneries
and least instructed nuns almost certainly did not have them at
all. Large and flourishing nunneries, where the nims were drawn
from the highest social classes, had the most learned and en-
lightened directors and confessors, who in some cases obtained
licenses for their use of English Bibles ; but the directors of small
nunneries were often parish priests, or friars who were not
eminent scholars in their order, and there is no evidence at all
that they encouraged these houses in the use of biblical" trans-
lations. It is significant, at any rate, that the scanty evidence
for the use of biblical translations in nunneries comes to us almost
entirely from Sion, the most splendid foundation of the fifteenth
century, though possibly also from Barking, another very impor-
tant house.

One treatise written for nuns comes from the period when the
discussion over the lawfulness of biblical translations was in pro-
gress, and echoes one of the common arguments about the diffi-
culty of translating without much circumlocution, — afterwards
developed at great length by friar Palmer. The author of the
Chastising of God's Children possibly wrote it for a nun of
Barking, since the earhest reference to the book (which dates
it as written previously to 1401), is in a Penitential'^ of Sibylla
Felton, abbess of that house from 1394-1419. The author stated
that "some now in these days," as if the custom were modern,
"use to say on English their psalter and mattins of our Lady,
and the seven psalms, and the litany 2,"— use, that is, an Enghsh
primer : for the Uttle office of our Lady, the penitential psalms
and the htany formed the invariable minimum part of such
books, — English manuscripts of which actually begin to be found

^ Madan, Sinn. Cat. v. no. 27701; for the reference, f. 145 b. The Chas-
tising was printed c. 1492, see Ricci, S , Census of Caxlons, no.
" Panes, 1904, xxviii.

D.w. B. 22

338 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-1526 [cil.

from this date, and not earlier^. He did not state that reading of
EngHsh gospels was actually practised at the date, but mentioned
that it was a disputed subject, — as indeed, in 1401, it was.

Many men reproveth to have the psalter, or mattins, or the gospel
in English, or the Bible, because they may not be translated into no
vulgar word by the word as it standeth, without great circumlocution,
after the feeling of the first writers, which translated that into Latin
by the teaching of the Holy Ghost. Nevertheless I will not reprove
such translations, ne I reprove not to have them on English, ne to
read on them where they may stir you to more devotion, and to the
love of God. But utterly to use them in English and leave the Latin,
I hold it not commendable, and namely in them that been bounden
to say their psalter, or mattins of our Lady.

The rest of the passage shews that the writer was mainly con-
cerned to point out to those bound to the recitation of the httle
office, that it was not fulfilled by the recitation of the translation
from the primer, any more than psalms given in penance could
be recited in English; but the passage probably covered an
approval of the use of English Bibles for meditation. In con-
nexion with the slight indication that the Chastising of God's
Children was written for a nun of Barking, it is interesting to
find that a Wycliffite manuscript belonged in the fifteenth cen-
tury to a Barking nun, and probably two Barking nuns in
succession. Sister Mary Hastings of Barking possessed a book
of English religious treatises, and among them the texts of the
apocryphal books of Tobias and Susanna ^i and its earlier owner
wrote her name in it as Matilda Hayle, of Barking. Probably
she also was a nun of the same house. The book must have been

1 Some writers (as Mr Manning in the People's Faith in the Age of Wyclif,
1916, pp. 10, 46), appear not to realise that the earliest primers, or books of
hours, were in Latin. Prymer, EETS, p. xxxix, gives the invariable minimum
of primers, both Latin and English, as the Hours of the B.V.M., the peni-
tential and gradual psalms, the litany, office for the dead, and the com-
mendations: other prayers and tracts were sometimes added. Emmanuel
246 is a late fourteenth century English primer, as were those described by
Carleton Brown, i. 24, 512; and there are no MSS. of English primers earlier
than c. 1380. D. 11. 82 is a Sarum primer of about 1430 : cf . those mentioned
in Maskell's Mon. Rit. Eccles. Ang.; Prymer, EETS, OS, 105. For owners of
primers in Latin, see VCH, Sussex, 11. 20.

2 FM, I. xUv, Addit. 10596, which has f. 82, Sister Mary Hastings,
unnoticed by the editors.

XIII] SIGN ABBEY 339

the sister's private property, and not a library book, though it
probably became one at sister Mary Hastings's death.

The first evidence for the period after 1408 is that of the
Myroure of our Ladye, from Sion abbey. This was a community
of monks and nuns, founded by Henry V in 1415, but not
properly estabhshed till the consecration of the second abbess in
1420, at Twickenham^. In the meantime, the community con-
sisted of postulants for the Brigittine order, many of whom were
already professed monks or nuns from other less strict English
orders ; the abbess for the first year was a Benedictine nun from
Barking, and the mixed communit}' was being trained by
Swedish sisters, from the parent house of the Brigittine order.
S. Bridget, their foundress, is credited with having made some
biblical translation ^ herself, and the order in Sweden encouraged
the use of Swedish books of devotion, as it did the study of
letters generally: the new community at Sion was therefore
likely to be open-minded as regards the use of biblical translations
into English. With the neighbouring community of Carthusians
of Sheen, it represented the great work of reparation of Henry V
for the murder of Richard II: it was very splendidly endowed,
and entered by ladies of the highest rank. The brothers at Sion,
much fewer in number, included some of the most eminent
scholars of the fifteenth century, so that the Sion nuns were
looked after b\' a much abler staff of chaplains than those of any
other nunnery in England. The Myroure was written between
1421 and 1450: it is a translation of the Brigittine office used by
the nuns, together with instructions to aid their understanding
and devotion in the recitation of the Latin office. The author
referred twice in it to the constitutions of 1408:

And forasmuch as it is forbidden under pain of cursing that no
man should have nor draw any text of holy scripture into English
without license of the bishop diocesan: and in divers places of your
service are such texts of holy scripture : therefore I have asked and have
license of our bishop to draw such things into English to your ghostly
comfort and profit, so that both our conscience in the drawing, and
yours in the having, may be the more sure and clear. ... Of psalms
I have dra\vn but a few, for ye may have them of Richard Hampole's
drawing, and out of English Bibles, if ye have license thereto^.

^ Incendium Amoris, Deanesly, M., pp. 109-29.
2 V, SuMoises [Versions], v. 1876.
* Myroure, p. 71, p. 3.

340 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH.

The brothers and sisters had separate libraries at vSion, and it
would have been of great interest to see whether the sisters'
library contained any English biblical translations. Unfor-
tunately, only the brothers' catalogue has survived: and this
shews that the brothers possessed no English Bibles when the
catalogue was compiled^. In 15 17, however, an early version of
the Wycliffite New Testament was presented to "the master
confessor and brethren of Sion" (not to the sisters), by dame
Alice Dan vers ^ so that henceforward the brothers could have
lent the sisters a copy.

The author of the Myroure has been conjectured to be doctor
Thomas Gascoign^, chancellor of Oxford, and a great benefactor
to Sion: he bequeathed his own library to the brethren. His "if
ye have license thereto " is not positive evidence that the sisters
did use English Bibles, and it is significant that he says nothing
about Bible reading, English or otherwise, in a long section de-
voted to the " devout reading of holy books ^" He described the
different kinds of books, but even when describing those which
"stir up the affections of the soul," he did not, as might have
been expected, mention the gospels. The passage is exactly parallel
to one of Hilton's, where such a reference is made. He referred
to following the lessons, or legend, at mattins, in English, while the
Latin was being read: but these lessons were not biblical, and
he was obviously referring to the translation and comment on
them which he had himself made as part of the Myroure^.

^ See Syon, 171, for a partial interlinear gloss; cf. infra, p. 418.

2 FM, I. Ixii, no. 156: without the Gen. Prol. or any evidence of heresy.

^ Myroure, ix. Gascoign was no doubt much interested in Sion: but it
seems a little doubtful whether one of the brothers, perhaps the liturgio-
logist, Clement Maidstone, is not a more probable compiler of so detailed a
commentary on the Brigittine office: especially as he alludes to having
obtained a license from "our bishop." French was still used in some
nunneries in the fifteenth century for directions and rules which the nuns
were not expected to be able to read in Latin: but English was used for
this purpose at Sion from the first, probably because the Swedish sisters
had already one language to learn beside their mother tongue. The Addi-
tions to the rule of S. Bridget, or local constitutions for the English Brigit-
tines, were drawn up in English, as was the Martilogimn, or obit book.
A Sion diiirnale, or book of hours, Magd. Camb. 11, has the rubrics in
English; and Magd. Camb. 13 is a book of the Latin and English verses
and prayers of Jasper Fyloll, apparently a Dominican who in 1518 had
passed on to Sion. * Myroure, 65-71.

^ Id. 71 : the services for the seven days of the week, including mattins.

XIII] ELEANOR HULL 341

A fifteenth century English translation of the penitential
psalms is also connected with Sion abbey. The second confessor
general, to whom the establishment of the house was really due,
who drew up the local rule for the house, and ruled the community
till his death in 1428, was Thomas Fishbourn, who had himself
in earlier hfe lived in a hermitage at S. Albans 1. During this
period he had attracted the king's notice through his acquaint-
ance with Eleanor Hull, Elizabeth Beauchamp and other court
ladies, who probably resorted to him tor spiritual direction.
Eleanor Hull, or Hill, did not become a Brigittine nun- when
Fishbourn was made confessor general at Sion, but one of her
pious exercises seems to have been the translation of a long com-
mentary or exposition on the seven penitential psalms, from
French into English. The work is very long and laborious ^ and
is followed by meditations on the seven days of the week, and
certain prayers, all attributed in the manuscript to Eleanor Hull.

Unfortunately we have no English nunnery catalogues to com-
pare with those of Nuremberg and Delft*: and their non-exist-
ence says little for the size or value of the nuns' libraries at the
date. Though it would probably be true to say that nuns used
English Bibles more frequently than lay people, — because they
needed them for meditation, because of the evidence of the Sion

are translated, pp. 72-276. The lessons at mattins were not those of the
breviary, but were gone through in the course of one week, and consisted
mainly of patristic passages selected in honour of our Lady.
^ Amundesham, RS, i. 27; Incendium, 114.

2 She is not called sister, laut Dame Alyanore Hull in Kk. i. 6, a fifteenth
century MS. of this commentary on the psalms, and meditations.

3 In Kk.i. 6, the commentary occupies ff. 1-148. It begins: f. 2, "Domine,
ne in furore tuo arguas me : This title is said in the end of the psalms of
David. Ye shall understand and know what title meaneth. Title is as much
as to say as a king, for to open the understanding of the letter of the psalms,
and the spiritual significance. For right as we openeth the door of the house
wherein we would enter, right so it behoveth by convenable expositions of
the title for to enter into the understanding of the psalm of which the title
goeth before. And now it is fitting that ye know what psalm is to mean:
psalm, as the scripture saith, is hymn," etc. Kk. i. 6 is not the original
MS , the note on f. 179 b, Alyanore Hull drew out of French all this before
written in this little book is copied, since Kk. i 6 is a large folio; the scribe's
name is given on f. 179 6 as a certain Walter.

* See pp. Ill, 113. Cf. King's Descrip. Cat. MS. 18, for a list of books be-
queathed (after c. 1380, since a Pupilla Oculi is mentioned) by Peter, the
vicar of Swine, to the small Cistercian nunnery of Swine: this has two Latin,
but no English biblical books. Cf. Monast. in. 424, for Kilburn nunnery,
which in 1536 had two English MSS. of the Legenda Aurea.

342 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH.

Myroure, and because the German and Dutch analogies suggest
it, — it is almost certainly an overstatement to say that English
biblical versions were at all frequently used in nunneries. There
is no single known case where a nunnery library possessed one :
John Busch and the Brethren of the Common Life had to fight
hard for the right of the sisters' communities to use German or
Dutch books, and we hear of no such orthodox champions of
vernacular Bibles in England. While the evidence is so slight,
it is unsafe to generalise: but it is highly improbable that a
majority of the nunneries possessed even an English gospel
and epistle book, much less an English Bible.

§ 6. Catalogues of libraries, the wills of private individuals,
and owners' names in existent manuscripts, give a fairly safe
index to the relative popularity of the English books used by
the devout in this period^. The mentions of English devotional
books in wills are much fewer than those of Latin service-books,
but a good many wills between 1408 and 1526 bequeathed either
a single English book, or a small collection of them. In lay
people's wills, the works of Richard Rolle were perhaps the
commonest, and were mentioned at least fourteen times. Nicholas
Love's Mirrour was bequeathed five times by clergy, and five
times by lay people, besides belonging to the canons of Osney
and the Sion nuns; probably also this book was sometimes re-
ferred to under the vague title of "English meditations on the
life of Christ," which occurs fairly frequently. Hilton's works
were bequeathed at least nine times, and other English books
less frequently mentioned were the Pore Caitiff, the second
Deguilleville Pilgrimage, known in English as Grace Dieu, English
primers (four times), the Chastising of God's Children, an English
book of the Pater Nosier, the Revelations of S. Bridget, Dives and
Pauper, the Knight of the Tower, the Legenda Aurea in English
prose or verse, Suso's Eternal Wisdom, and poems like the Gospel
of Nicodemus, John Awdley's Concilium Conscientiae, the South
English Legendary, and several saints' lives. Books of "vices
and virtues" were also fairly common. The wills thus shew the
nature of the English devotional books used in the fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries, especially by lay people: and the

^ See appendix, wills, p 391, and for books bequeathed by clergy, p. 333.
It is hoped to print lists of the English books found in wills, shortly.

XIII] ENGLISH BOOKS IN WILLS 343

relative infrequency of English biblical books is striking. Had
the use of the latter been generally encouraged by the Church, or
had their possession even been regarded as legitimate for the
laity in general, some case, or cases, of the bequest of Enghsh
Bibles by the laity would almost certainly have been found.
Enghsh Bibles, or English bibhcal books, were usually far longer
and more costly books than tracts of Rolle or Hilton, or Nicholas
Love's Mirrour, and there would be the more reason to mention
them in the testator's will: yet they are not found. There is no
reason to suspect that any of these testators who bequeathed
English books possessed English Bibles in their little collections,
though some, like Cecily, duchess of York, who died in 1495,
were of exalted rank and rich enough to do so. The inference is,
that the possession of English Bibles was rare, even among the
great.

§ 7. Among the frequent manuals for parish priests used
during the period, none have been found to recommend the
translation of the Sunday gospel as part of the sermon, the use
of an English Bible or English gospels in preparing sermons, or
the exhortation of parishioners to study the scriptures. No
passage has been found which suggests either that priests and
chaplains used translations themselves, or advised their use by
others.

The Latin manuals mentioned above continued to be the
most popular in the fifteenth century, though a few more were
written^. John Mirk, prior about 1403 of the house of Austin
canons in Lilleshall, Shropshire, wrote a Manuale SacerdoHim,
which he sent with a dedicatory letter to a certain parish priest,
saying that he hoped he would soon turn it into English -.

English manuals now began, however, to be written expressly
for parish priests. Mirk translated the greater part of the Pars
Oculi Sacerdotis^ into English verse, and into this book of In-
structions for Parish Priests* he put manifold directions for the
priest's own life, the direction of his flock, the administration of

1 Cf. the Speculum Curatorum, Mm. i. 20, Balliol. 77; the Stella Cleri-
corum, Laud Misc. 206, New Coll. ccciv. f. 94; the Manipulus Cura-
torum, Nor. and Norwich Archaeol. Soc. iv. 338, Line. Cath. Stats, ed. 1897,
847; early printed manuals, Trans. Bibliog. Soc. vii. 163 flf.

2 DNB, Mirk. ^ See p. 202.

* Ed. Peacock, EETS, OS, 31, 1868; cf. Wells, 361.

344 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-1526 [CH.

the sacraments, etc., but we find no mention of the study of the
Vulgate or its translations. The book is not merely a close trans-
lation of the Pars Oculi; it may fairly be said to portray the ideal
parish priest of about 1400 ; yei there is no mention of his having
any books besides office-books. Mirk, in his zeal for clerical
education, wrote also a collection of sermons for the greater
festivals, and this Liher Festivalis'^ became widely spread in
manuscripts and early printed editions. In his prologue. Mirk
stated that through his "own simple understanding" he under-
stood well the difficulty in preparing sermons of those who had
charge of souls, and "for that many excuse them for default of
books and also by simpleness of conning," he had translated
this treatise, mainly from the Legenda Aiirea, for their help.
The sermons are sometimes homilies upon texts, sometimes
legends of the saints, or sometimes begin with a Bible story:
but there is no indication that the gospel was ever to be itself
translated at the beginning of the sermon.

An early fifteenth century manuscript^ has a typical set of
sermons for the aid of the parish priest. The text, drawn always
from the Sunday gospel, is given in Latin, and the moral impli-
cations of the Sunday gospel are then expounded, without any
translation of the gospel itself, or even, in this manuscript, of
separate verses. Such sermons, or skeletons for sermons, are
fairly common: but none of them preface the sermon with a
translation of the gospel.

The writers of manuals for the laity generally professed that
they aimed at the instruction of the "lewid" or simple: but
those who could have owned and read the manuals could have
read biblical translations, so that references to these might have
been expected, if their use was encouraged. English manuals
were not written for the use of agricultural labourers, but for
well-born ladies and substantial burgesses; yet even for these,
there was no hint of exhortation to study the gospels. There
was no reference, as in a few early sixteenth century books in
Germany, to their acquainting themselves with the gospels, by
means either of attending sermons where the Sunday gospel

^ Wells, 301.

2 Trin. Camb. 333. This is the MS. which contains the Against them that
say that holy writ, printed p. 439, but these sermons appear quite orthodox.

XIII] ENGLISH MANUALS 345

was closely translated, or of getting some better educated
neighbour to read from some vernacular plenary or gospel book.
So far as manuals for the conduct of clergy and laity give evi-
dence, the movement which affected German orthodoxy through
the Brethren of the Common Life and their pupils, and which
finally recommended the acquaintance of the laity with the
vernacular gospels, never touched England at all.

The early fifteenth century manual. Dives and Pauper, men-
tioned earlier^, remarked almost regretfully that "now men
say that no lewid men should meddle with God's law, or the
gospel, or holy writ," but in its long discourses on the command-
ments, creed, etc., said nothing to recommend such meddling.
Nor did another manual written about 1400, which discoursed
similarly on the commandments, etc., and lamented the general
ignorance-:

Here ginnen the ten commandments of God. WTiere is any man
nowadays that asketh, how I should love God and mine even-
Christian ? how I shall flee sin and serve God trulj'^ as a true Christian
man should ? What man is that, that will learn the true law of God,
which He biddeth every Christian man to keep upon pain of damna-
tion in hell without end? Who knoweth the seven deadly sins and
their branches, the seven deeds of mercy bodily and ghostly, and his
five wits? as who saith, but few. Unnethe is there any lewid man or
lewid woman that can right well say his pater noster, his ave Maria
and his creed, and sown the words out readily as they should. But
when they play Christmas games about the fire, therein will they
not fail.

There were several other fifteenth century manuals for the
laity which were simply expositions of the usual skeleton of

^ See p. 326. The writer translated some verses of the gospels himself.

2 Laud Misc. 23, § i, ff. 3-7; 210, ff. 20-93 ^i cf. Bernard, Cat. no. 2315.
The tract is addressed primarily to his mother, and "wit ye well that I
desire every man and woman and child to be my mother, for Christ saith:
he that doth His Father's will, is His brother, sister, and mother," Laud
Misc. 23, f. 20. The author was not a Lollard, but had a grudge against the
religious orders, cf . f. 67 6 : "Better it were to leave such ordinances of men :
therefore His (Christ's) religion is most general, for all men be bound to
hold it upon pain of damnation : and most free, for Christ with His convent
asketh not twenty marks, as thou wouldest some time have given for me
to have been a canon, and they would not receive me for less than twenty
pounds. Blessed be Christ with His free convent, that it so ordamed, for
He loveth no simony, ne asketh of none that will come to His religion pecis
(cups), mazers, ne silver spoons, ne whether he be bond nor free, or come of
great lords to maintain their possessions." Extracts printed in Rel. Antiq.
1.38.

346 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-1526 [cH.

theology and ethics, — creed, commandments, the deadly sins,
the works of mercy, etc. Sometimes expositions on the five wits,
the four counsels of perfection, the eight beatitudes, the principal
joys of Paradise, the principal pains of hell, etc., were added, the
whole forming a long list of short homilies 1. The commonest of
these manuals constructed on the official plan, was the Speculum
Chrisiiani^ of John Watton, which did for the south of England
and the fifteenth century what Gaytrik's treatise had done for
the north of England and the fourteenth. Gaytrik's work had
been in rhyme, this exposition was in prose, " a treatise in English
containing the archbishop's order as to what parsons and vicars
ought to teach their parishioners ^ ' ' with the usual syllabus follow-
ing. Another very common one was the collection of homiUes on
the creed, commandments, pater noster, etc., known as the Pore
Caitiff^, the authorship of which is of special interest, as it has
been mistakenly attributed to the Lollards, and even Wycliffe.
This was due to the similarity of the way in which the author
alludes to himself, to that of Purvey in his prologues to the
LoUard comments on the gospel:

"This treatise*," he says, "compiled of a poor caitiff and needy of
ghostly help of God, shall teach simple men and women of good will
the right way to heaven, if they will busy them to have it in mind
and work thereafter, without multiplication of many books: and as
a child, willing to be a clerk, beginneth at the ground, that is, his
A. B. C., so he thus desiring to speed the better, beginneth at the
ground of health, that is, Christian man's belief; . . . but, for the belief's
self is not sufficient to man's salvation, withouten good works of
charity, as Christ saith by His apostle Saint James, therefore he

^ As in Addit. 10106, fif. 39 6-47, where 20 such headings are discussed.

^ See pp. 196-200.

^ Sidney Sussex, 55, f. 41; Jesus, 51; Pembroke, 285, f. 51 b, which be-
longed in fourteenth century to Ralph Maynard; Laud Misc. 104; Bernard,
Cat. no. 1886.

* Wells, 482 ; extracts printed in Vaughan's Life of Wycliffe {British Re-
formers), 1852, pp. 382 S.

^ Ff. 6. 34, f. I, early fifteenth century. See Wells, 482. The authorship
of this tract has been confused by the supposition that Pecock alluded
to its author as "3. certain friar," who wrote it "pro suo defensorio" (see
FZ, xiii. n. 3), a description which obviously cannot apply to the contents
of this treatise. Pecock much more probably alluded to the friar Peckham's
Liber Pauperis contra insipientem novellarum haeresium confectorem, i.e.
William de St- Amour; or possibly to the Protectorium Pauperis of the
Carmelite, Richard Maidstone, which Walden copied in his MS. of the FZ;
cf. FZ, Ixxiv.

XIII] THE PORE CAITIFF 347

purposeth with God's help, suyngly to tell the commandments of
God, in which the charitable works be contained, that belong to the
belief. And, for it is hard to purchase aught of God in prayer till a man
verily believe and live after His behests, as He Himself saith in the
gospel: Whereto say ye me. Lord, Lord, and do not thilke things that
I say? therefore, following after the behests, he thinketh with the
help of God to shew shortly the prayer that Jesu Christ taught to
His disciples, that is, the pater noster; and after these, some short
sentences exciting men to heavenly desire, for thus it behoveth to
stigh^ up as by a ladder of divers rungs, fro the ground of belief unto
the keeping of God's hests, and so up fro virtue to virtue till he see
God of Sion reigning in everlasting bliss."

After this prologue come homilies on the creed, command-
ments, pater noster, the counsels of perfection, and a few short
tracts, some of which may have been original, while others were
certainly extracted or copied from- various religious writers, in-
cluding Rolle and Hilton I There is nothing at all to shew that
the author sympathised with Lollardy, and the mystical pieces
selected by him as "exciting to heavenly desire" are from the
stock authors of mediaeval mysticism. The collection dates from
about 1400, or perhaps a few years earlier: but though as far as
the date goes the work might be Purvey's, it is unlikely for
dialectal and other reasons ^ In any case, the first tracts on the
creed, commandments, etc., follow the normal form, and contain
no advice to study the gospels.

^ Climb or rise.

^ These short tracts, corresponding to the "short sentences exciting men
to heavenly desire" of the prologue differ in number and order in diflferent
MSS., which have not yet been collated for the establishment of the text.
Fl. 6. 34 has, after that on the counsels, Si quis vult venire post me, tracts
known as Patience, Temptation, Charter of Pardon, the Soul and the Flesh,
De Nomine Jesu (which incorporates passages from Rolle's Form of perfect
living, cf. f. 87 b and Horstmann, i. 37-8), Meekness, Active and Contem-
plative Life (apparently. Hilton's Epistle on Mixed Life), Chastity. These
tracts are found, with some others, in Rawlinson, C. 69, C. 699, C. 75 1 , C. 882 ;
Ashmole, 1286, Douce, 21587, 288; Bernard, Cat. nos. 1843, 2322, 3054;
Exeter, 49; Magd. Oxford, 93; Ff. 6. 34; Ff. 6. 55.

^ (i) The conventionality of the teaching suggests a very early work of
Purvey if it were his at all, and the MSS. of the Pore Caitiff all appear
sUghtly too late in date for this. (2) Purvey's dialect was of the com-
paratively uninflected type usual with Oxford scholars at the date, while
the original pieces of the P.C. are more distinctly southern. (3) Purvey was
uninterested in mysticism, and would scarcely have added so many mystical
extracts to his collection. Thus the selection of "poor caitiff" as a pseudo-
nym by the author must have been merely a coincidence with Purvey's

348 BIBLE READING BY THE ORTHODOX, I408-1526 [CH.

§ 8. It will thus be seen that there is no pre-Reformation
evidence whatever for the positive encouragement of English
Bible reading by the Church, though nuns and lay-women were
sometimes given individual licenses to use them. On the other
hand, the abundant evidence on fifteenth century Church cus-
toms leaves no room for doubt that the gospel was never
normally translated at mass. It is interesting, finally, to com-
pare these historical results, and sir Thomas More's scheme in
1528 for the presentation of English Bibles to the orthodox
devout of the upper classes^, with the earhest sets of episcopal
injunctions which dealt with the matter in the English Reforma-
tion, and which date from the year 1538. Different editions of
the English scriptures had been issued between Tindale's New
Testament, in 1526, and Coverdale's revised Bible, known as the
Great Bible, whose issue was expected in 1538, although it was
actually delayed till 1539. The lesser monasteries had fallen,
and the Enghsh Reformation had begun its course, when in 1538
Cromwell sent to archbishop Cranmer the Royal Injunctions
which ordered that a copy of the Great Bible was to be set in
a convenient place in every parish church, for parishioners to
read. The bishops issued their own injunctions for the carrying
out of these Royal Injunctions in their own dioceses, and three
of those issued in 1538, — those of archbishop Lee of York,
Shaxton of Salisbury, and Voysey of Exeter — are of particular
interest with regard to the provisions made for the use of these
English Bibles.

They provided for the reading of the gospel and epistle from
the Enghsh Bible at mass, in the pulpit, with a sermon thereon
if possible:

All curates [parish priests] . . . shall every holy-day read the gospel
and epistle of that day out of the English Bible, plainly and dis-
tinctly 2.

All. . .having cures [are commanded to] every Sunday and holy-
day continually recite, and sincerely declare in the pulpit, at the

use of similar ones. Cf. Madan, Sum. Cat. iv, no. 21947 ^o^ John Burton's
translation of the Legenda Aurea, "dra\vn out of French into English by a
sinful wretch"; E. Underhill's Mirror of Simple Souls, 5, " I most unworthy-
creature and outcast of all other"; index of Holder Egger's Chron. Salim-
bene, for Petrus Peccator, Pietro Peccadore.

1 See Workes, Dialogue, 245. ^ Lee. of York: Frere, Visi!-. 11. 46..

XIllJ INJUNCTIONS OF I538 349

high mass time, in the Enghsh tongue, both the epistle and gospel
of the same day (if there be time thereto), or else the one of them
at the least ^.

All such of the said clergy, having cure of souls within my diocese,
[are commanded to] every Sunday declare sinterely in time and
place accustomed, in the English tongue, or in the Coi-nish tongue
where the English tongue is not used, all or part of the epistle or
gospel of that day^.

References to the setting up of the Enghsh Bible in the church

occur in several of the episcopal injunctions of the date^: and

also sentences which shew that opposition to the reading of the

English Bible by the laity was expected from some at least of

the clergy, — a confirmation of the assertion of the Messenger in

sir Thomas More's Dialogue. Bishop Rowland Lee, of Coventry,

had even before the Royal Injunctions of 1538 ordered each

parish priest to place a Bible in Latin and English in his church,

for any man to read:

And [ye] shall not discourage, but earnestly ... admonish every
man to read the Bible in Latin or English : . . . always gently and
charitably exhorting them to use a sober and modest behaviour in
the reading and inquisition of the true sense*.

And that ye shall discourage no man privily or apertly from the
reading or hearing of the said Bible 5.

That they shall (according to the king's highness' Injunctions) in
nowise discourage any man to read in the English Bible, . . . but shall
comfort them therein : nevertheless exhorting them to enter into the
reading thereof with a spirit of meekness, etc.®

That none of you discourage any lay person from reading of holy
scripture, but rather animate and encourage them thereto, so that it
be done of them without bragging or arrogancy^.

That ye, nor none of you, shall discourage any layman from the

1 Shaxton, of Salisbury, Frere, Visit. 11. 54.

2 Voysey, of Exeter, id. 11. 61. For Edward VI's Injunctions to the same
effect in 1547, see id. 11. 123; for Royal Injunctions to Lincoln minster, 1548,
id. II. 168; for Cranmer's articles for Canterbury diocese, 1548, id. Ii. 180;
and cf. references given under Gospel, id. i. 274.

3 See under Bible. Frere, Visit, i. 224.

« In 1537, id. II. 20. All these injunctions of 1537-8 enjoining Enghsh
Bible reading are coupled with clauses for the declaration of the king's
Supreme Headship under Christ of the Church of England, the withstanding
of the usurpations of the bishop of Rome, etc. This lends no support to any
theory that the Bible-reading clauses were merely the recognition of an
earher custom. They were in fact as novel as the other clauses.

^ Id. II. 36, Royal Injunction of 1538.

6 Id. II. 46, York, 1538 ' Shaxton, 1538, id. 11. 56.

350 BIBLE READING BY ORTHODOX, I408-I526 [CH. XIII

reading of the Bible in Latin or English, but encourage them that
they so read it. . .and that they be not bold nor presumptuous in
judging of matters afore they have perfect knowledge^.

These episcopal injunctions of 1538 imitated earlier Lollard
practice in two other points, — the enjoining of the learning of
parts of the Bible by heart, and the use of vernacular prayers.
Earlier Waldensians and Lollards had learned the sacred text
by heart through the impossibiUty of providing Bibles for any
but the affluent: parish priests were now enjoined to learn long
portions of the New Testament by heart for the admonition or
comfort of their parishioners.

That every one having cure of souls ... do perfectly con without
the book the two whole gospels of Matthew and John, and the
epistles of Paul to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, and other
as they stand, with the Acts of the Apostles, and the canonical
epistles, after the rate: to con every fortnight one chapter without
the book, and the same to keep still in memory 2.

Bonner in 1542 ordered all priests of the diocese of London to
learn the whole New Testament by heart ^, and many episcopal
injunctions about 1538 made elaborate arrangements for parish
priests to read or study one chapter a day, or "confer the
English with the Latin*." Vernacular prayers had never been
explicitly condemned as unorthodox, but the suspicion they
aroused in the fifteenth century through their use by the
Lollards had been very great ^: it was now in 1538 ordered in
several dioceses that all parish priests were to place in their
churches a book comprising the pater noster, ave Maria, creed
and commandments in EngHsh, for their parishioners to learn ^;
that parish and chantry priests were to teach children to read
English, that they might the better learn how to pray"'; and
"from henceforth" not discourage any lay person from the
reading of any good books in Latin or English. How real the
suspicion of the use of English for books of prayers had become
can be seen from the records of some of the Lollard trials^

1 Qranmer, 1538, Frere, Visit. 11. 65. For the royal articles of 1547, in-
quiring what priests had discouraged the people from hearing and reading of
the scriptures in English, see id. 11. 107, and for later references, id. 224.

2 Shaxton, 1538, id. 11. 55. * id. 11. 83.

* See under Bible, id. i. 225. ^ See pp. 62, 87.

® Frere, Visit. 11. 21, 36, 45, 46, 56, 61, 63, 66.
^ 1537, id. II. 17. 8 See p. 366.

CHAPTER XIV

The Lollards and English Bible reading

§ I. In 1526 Tindale despatched to England the first printed
copies of his New Testament, and the old manuscripts of the
Wycliffite Bible became no longer text-books for ecclesiastical
reformers, but literary curiosities. Lollardy was a continuous,
though not an equally powerful movement in the preceding
period. It gained in strength till the suppression of Oldcastle's
revolt in 1416, when any chance of its political success was
-crushed. The humbler Lollards were then systematically at-
tacked by the bishops till about 1431, from which time forward
there were few Lollard trials till the middle of the century. In
1457 bishop Pecock's orthodox apologetic was itself condemned
as Lollardy, after which the embers smouldered for about thirty
years. From 1494 onward the movement took a new birth,
partly due to a parallel reform movement in Germany, but con-
sciously associated by its professors with the teaching of Wycliffe.
Till the beginning of Tindale's activities the Lollards were con-
sidered a danger to the Church, and were tried in large numbers.
Throughout all the period the records of Lollard trials associate
the use of English biblical books with heresy.

It is here proposed to follow the history of the Lollards only in
so far as it touches that of the use of English Bibles, — a con-
nexion which has been challenged as non-existent, — and for the
sake of comparison between the use of EngHsh Bibles by the
Lollards and the orthodox, especially in the fifteenth century.
Some general considerations must be dealt with as affecting the
evidence, which will then be given in its chronological order.
' First, since the mere making of an English Bible was not de-
clared unlawful before 1408, no formal mention of their use or
possession could be expected in heresy trials earlier.

Secondly, the evidence as to the connexion of Lollardy with
the use of EngHsh Bibles does not rest solely on those definite

352 THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

instances when Lollards are proved to have owned some biblical
book: though, even on this point alone, the evidence is very
much more plentiful for them than in the case of the orthodox.
Thus, though there were many Lollard trials where the question
of English Bibles was not directly raised at all, there was not one
in which it was not implied, since the chief question at issue was
always the testing of some doctrine by an appeal to the letter
of the New Testament. If there were no proven case where a
Lollard possessed an Enghsh Bible, it would still be impossible
to read the records of Lollard trials without recognising that the
whole of LoUardy rested upon the popularisation of the New
Testament.

Thirdly, there is evidence that, like the early Waldensians, the
Lollards practised the teaching and learning by heart of the
biblical translations. Manuscripts were relatively commoner in
the fifteenth century than in the twelfth and thirteenth, and could
be owned by less wealthy people: but there are many cases to
shew that Lollard schools were meetings to hear or learn the
bibUcal text. The evidence for the use of English Bibles rests
not only on cases of Lollard ownership, but also on the records
of these meetings.

Fourthly, there is considerable lack of explicitness in the
records, as between ownership of biblical translations, or of
books of Lollard doctrine, "Lollard books," "books of their
' lore," etc. Unlicensed possession of English books deahng with
theology had been as definitely prohibited in 1408 as Enghsh
Bibles, and therefore the mere possession of English books was
often cited as suspicious evidence of heresy. In some cases where
the possession of "English books" is thus mentioned, they were
no doubt Lollard polemical tracts, but in others, from the funda-
mental nature of Lollardy, they were probably English books of
epistles or gospels, or some such biblical translation.

Finally, it is clear that, though the possession of Enghsh
biblical books was not classed as heresy in itself, it was very
often the first sign by which suspicion of heresy was aroused.
Witnesses often deposed that they suspected the accused to be a
Lollard, because he or she knew certain prayers in Enghsh, or the
words of the gospels ^, or possessed some English biblical book.

1 VCH, Essex, 11. 21.

XIV] THORPE AND THE BIBLE 353

As one Lollard who destroyed some valuable books out of fear
"that they would incriminate him remarked, "he had rather
burn his books, than that his books should burn him^." The
willingness to recite verses from the English Bible to a neighbour
was often quoted as a sign of heresy. The records of heresy trials
justify the assertion in an early fifteenth century Lollard tract :
"The third assault of Antichrist is Inquisition, as the prophet
saith, . . . that is to say, Antichrist seeketh and hearkeneth where
he may find any man or woman that writeth, readeth, learneth
or studieth God's law in their mother tongue 2."

Thus to some extent it is fair to say that the existence of
Lollardy was in itself evidence of the use of English biblical
books. Since its existence throughout the fifteenth century is
'now known to have been continuous in many centres, as the
Victoria County History shews, some mention will now be made
of these centres, apart from explicit proof of Bible reading
carried on in them.

§ 2. The Lollard William Thorpe, who was tried b}^ Arundel
in 1407, has been mentioned earlier for his account of Purvey:
but his history of his own trial brings out also the insistence of
all Lollards on the bibhcal text. Thorpe was a priest ^ who had
belonged to the Wyclifhte circle at Oxford from 1377 onwards,
and travelled about as a Lollard preacher, especially in the north
midlands, from 1387. He protested to Arundel:

I believe that all the Old Law and the New Law, given and or-
dained by the counsel of these three Persons in the Trinity, were
given and ordained to the salvation of mankind : and I believe that
these Laws are sufficient for man's salvation,

— a typical Lollard assertion as to the sufficiency of the Old and
New Testaments. "I submit mc," he added, not "to holy
Church," but "to be reconciled to be buxom and obedient unto
these Laws of God, and to every Article of them*." In accord-
ance with this declaration, he alleged against the archbishop the
letter of the New Testament on every disputed point ; he would
not submit and give information as to other Lollards, " for I find
in no place in holy scripture this office that ye would now

^ See p. 367. * Lanterne. a tract written before 1415. see p. 15.

» Pollard, 107: "sir William" is a translation of "dominus," meaning
merely our "reverend." Arundel's threat of degradation, id. 114, shews
that Thorpe was a priest, cf. id. 132. * Id. iii.

D. w B. 23

354 THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

enfeoff me with." He defended his having preached without
episcopal license,

for by authority of God's Law. . .1 am learned to deem that it is
every priest's ofi&ce and duty for to preach busily, freely and truly the
Word of God: for no doubt every priest should purpose first in his
soul and covet to take the order of priesthood chiefly for to make
known to the people the Word of God,

the novelty of which doctrine at the date is explained by the
extent to which lay people were ignorant of the biblical text.
Thorpe then quoted a text from Samuel in support of his argu-
ment, and Arundel retorted.

All these allegings that thou bringest forth are nought else but
proud presumptuousness, . . . that thou and such others are so just
that ye ought not to obey to Prelates,

to which Thorpe answered by more "allegings," and Arundel,
losing patience, cried to the three clerks that stood about him :

Lo, Sirs, this is the manner and business of this losell and such
others, to pick out such sharp sentences of Holy Scripture and of
Doctors, to maintain their sect and lore against the ordinance of
Holy Church ! And therefore, losell, is it, that thou covetest to have
again the psalter that I made to be taken from thee at Canterbury,
to record sharp verses against us ! But thou shalt never have that
psalter, nor none other book, till that I know that thy heart and
thy mouth accord fully to be governed by Holy Church^.

The lively form of the answer may be due to Thorpe himself,
but all Lollard defences render the truthfulness of the answer
likely: whether Thorpe's psalter were Latin or English, the
Lollards needed biblical texts, and the less lettered ones, trans-
lations, for the maintenance of their doctrine, and their attacks
on the lives of prelates. Arundel did not object to the psalter as
a heretical book, but he objected to the Lollard's use of it. His
outburst to Thorpe was justified again and again afterwards
throughout the interview, when on the subjects of transub-
stantiation, images 2, pilgrimages ^ music in churches, and

1 Pollard, 128.

^ Id. 135, where Arundel recounts the devout practices of those who
make images of the saints, and Thorpe answers: "Sir, I doubt not if these
painters that ye speak of, or any other painters, understood truly the text
of Moses, of David, of the Wise Man, and of other Saints and Doctors, these
painters should be moved to shrive them to God, with full inward sorrow
of heart."

3 Where, id. 139, Thorpe asserts that "examine whoso will, twenty of

XIV] OLDCASTLE 355

tithes^, Thorpe alleged more scriptural passages, to the prejudice
of the existent ecclesiastical organisation.

"Why losell," said the archbishop, "wilt not thou, and others that
are confederated with thee, seek out of Holy Scripture and of the
sentence of Doctors, all sharp authorities against Lords and Knights
and Squires, and against other secular men, as thou dost against
priests?"

Thorpe's defence of his LoUardy has been here quoted as
typical. He was tried before 1408, so that the question of his
possession of English books or Bibles did not expressly arise;
but the whole tenor of his defence lay in the citation of biblical
passages, and it shews how essential the literal text, in Latin or
English, was to Lollardy.

After the failure of Purvey's leadership of Lollardy, as shewn
by the constitutions of 1408 and the collapse of the Lollard dis-
endowment scheme of 1410, Oldcastle became the avowed
leader of the Lollards. His marriage with an heiress had given
him large and scattered estates, so that he became of great use
locally to the Hereford, Kentish, Norfolk and London Lollards '^
as well as to the party as a whole. An anti-Lollard poem men-
tions his familiarity with the Bible in the lines :

It is unkindly for a knight,

That should the kinges castle keep.
To babble the Bible day and night

In resting time when he should sleep^.

He was tried in 1414, after a political revolt, at Blackfriars,
London, and among his judges was friar Thomas Palmer, the
old opponent of English Bibles. Palmer asked him concerning
his faith in images, and whether he would worship the cross
Christ died upon, to which Oldcastle returned the usual Lollard
answer. He was finally executed as a heretic and traitor in 1417.
■ Meanwhile, Lollards of his political standing were tried in
London in considerable numbers, still for "alleging" authorities

these pilgrims, and he shall not find three men or women that know surely
a Commandment of God, nor can say their Pater noster and Ave Maria,
nor their Credo, readily, in any manner of language."

1 Id. 143, "I know not where this sentence of cursing is authorised now
in the Bible."

2 See W. T. Waugh's Oldcastle, EHR. xx. 434, 637.
* Polit. Songs, RS, 11. 244.

23 — 2

" 356 THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

from the Bible in support of new-fangled doctrine. In 1408
John Badby was burned^; and in 1415 John Claydon^, a parche-
myner, was apprehended and confessed to the possession of
English books, including the Lanterne of Light: the canonist,
Lyndwood, examined them, and they were declared rankly
Lollard. The next year a Lincolnshire heretic was accused of
having "a certain book which he, contrary to the former decree
of the bishops, did conceal and not exhibit to them^." Acts of
parliament had already made the possession of Lollard books
dangerous, but in 1416 archbishop Chichele. in a letter to the
bishop of London, required all bishops and archdeacons to make
diligent inquiry, at least twice a year, in every deanery and
parish, touching persons suspected of heresy, or "possessing
books written in English*." The preparation, however, of
Lollard books and English gospels still continued, for that same
year two priests were accused in London on both counts, — and
it is the first case after 1408 when English Bibles are expressly
recorded as having figured in a charge of heresy. Ralph Mungin
was accused of circulating in the city of London certain books
of Wycliffe and Peter the Clerk, especially "the book Trialogus
and the gospels of John Wycliffe^"; he denied the charge of
heresy, and was committed to prison. The entry in Chichele's
register supports Hus's contention that all Englishmen believed
Wycliffe to have translated the Bible: for a copy of the gospels
would not have had the heretical General Prologue, or any
scribal ascription to Wycliffe. The other priest, who had an
English New Testament, was also condemned^. Lollard y. even
at this date, was not dependent on the ministrations of laymen,
as the trials of several priests shew '. Lollard books seem to have
been still mostly rnpied in London, for in 1424 Richard Baxter

1 Kingsford, 68.

^ AM, III. 531; Kingsford, 69; Mem. of London, Riley, 617. For Richard
Baker, burnt about the same time, see Kingsford, 69, 297: and for a
Nottinghamshire heretic, 141 3, Gairdner, i. 70.

^ AM, III. 537. * Gairdner, i. 93.

* AM, III. 539, from Chichele's register; of. Ussher, xii. 359, and DNB
for Mungin's connexion with Peter the Clerk, or Payne.

* AM, III. 538; for William Hervey, accused in 1416 of owning suspected
books, see id. ; for two false accusations of London men, Mem. of London,
658, 666.

' E.g. William Taylor, Kingsford, 128, Summers, 75; the vicar of Thaxted,
Kingsford, 134, 308; Thomas Baggely; and the parish priest of Chedingfold.

XIV] SOMERSET LOLLARDS 357

was accused of "keeping a school of Lollardy in the English
tongue," and of having all the books of that doctrine brought
to him from London^.

In S6mersetshire2;;:^he record of Lollardy was continuous,
though not striking, throughout the century, and seems to have
originated with Purvev's Breaching in the suburbs of Bristol ^
about 1387; a Bristol burgess also was in 1404 one of the few
known possessors of an English Bible at the date. No Somerset-
shire Lollards were burned, but several abjured. In 1413 John
Devenish^ was accused of LoUardy, and of having placed "a
scandalous book of the Lollards" in a vicar's stall. Thomas
Smith of Bristol was accused in 1422 ^ and in 1429 William
Curayn, of Bristol, was cited for heresy for the fifth time, and,
imprisoned by the bishop, he confessed that he had held that
" every priest was bound to preach the Word of God openly, and
that Oldcastle and Wycliffe were holy martyrs." In 1449 John
Young, an old and infirm chaplain of S. Cross, abjured similar
errors, and agreed to surrender all his heretical books. In 1455
bishop Beckington complained to the duke of Somerset that the
duke's tenants at Langport neither "dreaded God nor lived by
Holy Church"; they ministered the sacraments and buried the
d^ad^ themselves, and even alleged the duke's support for so
doing, though the bishop refused to believe that this could be
true. In 1459 Thomas Cole, a baker, abjured, and in 1475 there
were still many heretics in the diocese.

Between 1424 and 1430 more than a hundred persons were
arraigned for Lollardy in the diocese of NorwicK^. In 1429 John
Baker was convicted of having a book of the pater noster and
other prayers in English ^, which looks as if English primpl-s had
fallen nnHpr prpnpral g^igpirinn, as bcing English and therefore
Lollard. Margery Backster, the wife of a carpenter at Martham
in Norfolk, was accused of heresy before the bishop of Norwich

1 AM, III. 585. 2 See VCH, Gloucs. 11. 21.

3 For all these Somerset Lollards, see id. 21-4; DH, Bath and Wells,
142, 3, 5, 6; for Bristol Lollards in 1457, Summers, 80-3.

* Gairdner, i. 128.

' Summers, 71. Lollardy had started early in the eastern counties:
Sawtre, the first Lollard to be burned, was a chaplain of S. Osyth's.
Walbrook, id. 57.

« AM, III. 594.

358 THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

in 1428^: another woman deposed against her that Margery had
made various attempts to enlighten her as to Lollard doctrines,
and said that she "secretly desired her, that she and Joan her
maid would come secretly, in the night, to her chamber, and
there she should hear her husband read the law of Christ unto
them, which law was written in a book that her husband was
wont to read to her by night." The "law of Christ," and " Goddis
la we " were still the ordinary Lollard__terins for the New Testa-
ment and the Bible ^. In two cases there was even suspicion of
Lollardy in connexion with a religious: in 1427 Isabella Hermit,
the prioress of Ridingfield, confessed to certain scandalouTcrimes,
but vehemently denied_the_additional charge of Lollardy ; while
Parthol^mpw of F^T-gham^ accused of Lollardy in 1428, seems
to have been a monk^ In 1429 many more proceedings were
taken against N^rioljc^ollards : Nicholas Belward, a relation
presumably of the Richard who kept a Lollard school, had a
"New Testament which he bought at London for four marks
and forty pence," out of which he taught others*. It was
alleged against Richard Fletcher, a member of the same Lollard
group, that he had an Enghsh book; and against the "daughter
of Thomas Moon," "that she was partly of the same sect, and
could read English " ; William Bate also and his wife " could read
English very well, and were of the same sect^." John Pert "was
of the same sect and could read well " ; and Hugh Pie bequeathed
to another Lollard "a New Testament which they then called a
book of the new law^." In the diocese of Canterbury too, two
men were detected for LoUards in 143 1 through their attendance
at a reading of "reprobated books'," and in that of Lincoln
heresy was to be found. Robert Fleming, bishop of Lincoln,
founded Lincoln College in 1427, "with a view to thp. pytprmina-
tion-and destruction of the sects_ofJieretics, who are growing
more than is wont ^."

After these crusades, particularl}^ those of the ^ishops^^of
Norwich_and_L.Qiidfin between 1429 and 1431, the Lollards were
for a time very little heardjof. The wars of the Roses in the

^ AM, III. 595. The register from which Foxe transcribed these Norfolk
heresy trials is not published. The spelling of surnames from AM is not
modernised. ^ Cf. "book of the new law," AM, iii. 538.

3 DH, Norwich, 147-9. * AM, in. 597. * Id. 597. « Id. 597.

' RS, Liter ae Cantuar. in. 156. ^ DH, Lincoln, 185.

XIV] SCOTCH LOLLARDS 359

middle of the century tended to distract attention from them:
but although nothing like the same numbers were accused by
the bishops between 1430 and 1480 as before and after those
dates, nevertheless, records of occasional Lollard trials shew
that the movement did not die out. It had travelled to Scotland,
and certainly had a continuous existence there through the
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries : John Resly, a Wycliffite
from England, was burned in Scotland in 1407^, and Gerson
complained of the influence of Wycliffism there about 1415, in
his work on the literal interpretation of holy scripture -. " There
is opposition to the truth in England, in Scotland, in the uni-
versity of Prague, and in Germany, . . . they claim that their
sayings are founded on holy scripture, and on its hteral sense,
and they say that they follow and recognise scripture only, . . .
such heretics are present in England, have destroyed the uni-
versity of Prague, and have even reached Scotland." A
Bohemian Wyclifhte, Paul_Cl§w» ^^s burned in Scotland in
1 43 1 ^. Lollardy was again prevalent in 1494, when a_raid jwas
made upon the_Lollards of Kyle, and in consequence thirty
persons were summoned by the archbishop of Glasgow before
the king and privy council*. A certain Murdoch Nisbet joined
this sect about 1500, and when he fled to Germany in 15 13
obtained access to Purvey's version of the New Testament. This
he carefully copied in his own dialect, between 15 13 and 1522,
as well as the Hturgical lessons from the Old Testament : but his
Scots version was made so soon before the appearance of
Tindale's New Testament, that it remained in a solitary manu-
script. Among other Scottish Lollards, the Gordons of Earlstown
had a New Testament in the vulgar tongue ^ Lollardy persisted,
however, elsewhere than in Scotland. John Gardiner was burned
in 1438, and Richard Wyche was burned on Tower Hill in 1440.
Five Lollards abjured in Surrey in 144 1, and there were Lollards
at Bristol between 1454 and 1457; two Somersetshire heretics

- 1 Summers, 57. Scottish Hist. Rev. i. 260-73.

* De sensu litterali sacrae scripturae, et de causis errantium, in Opera,
Antwerp, 1706, Du Pin, i. 2.

3 Summers, 72. For intercourse of English and Bohemian Wycliffites at
the period, of. the subsequent career of Peter the Clerk, supra, p. 240, who
was present at the council of Bale in 1432.

« Test. Scots, xii. * Id. xxxii.

36o THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

recanted in 1459^. In the diocese of Lichfield, John Woodward
of Tamworth abjured_Lollard heresies in 1454^. The records of
the trials of these heretics still remain unpublished in the
episcopal registers, so that there is an absence of detail as to their
possession of biblical translations or Lollard books : but the record
of this in the case of the earlier Lollards is so precise, and the
character of Lollardy continued so essentially unchanged, that
it is hardly possible to doubt that they too possessed biblical
manuscripts. Though a certain proportion of the manuscripts
of the Wycliffite versions, written in the fifteenth century and
still existent, bear no trace of either Lollard or orthodox owner-
ship, it would not be safe to assume that they were written
originally for, or used exclusively by, either part)'^ Some of
them have calendars to shew the appointed portions for the
Sunday epistles and gospels, — but it was the Lollard Purvey
who, unlike any orthodox writer, advocated translations of these
portions of the mass, and such manuscripts may well have be-
longed to Lollards. The evidence for Lollard use of English
Bibles is strong where it is almost non-existent for their use by
orthodox lay people; and it is very much stronger than for their
use in convents.

§ 3. Though Lollardy had been thus dormant foi-lwentv

years, the tpndpnry to rritirjsp prrlpci^ctiral— insi-ifntinng and

tparhing in th<^ light r>f thp Ipftpr of fbp N^w Testament still
pressed-^eavily^aiBon some minds ; for the most conspicuous and
original of English fifteenth century theologians was drawn
to grapple with it by new methods, which ended finally in his
own undoing. Although bishop Pecock wrote his most notable
book in defence of orthodoxy against the Lollards, he was in two
senses the descendant oi Wycliffe and Purvey. He claimed that
reason itself must be the guide in the interpretation of the scrip-
tures,— thus facing the crucial problem of interpretation more
directly than the Lollards had done — and he did more than any

^ For all this intermediate period, 1430-80, passed over by Foxe, who
was presumably without reference to the local episcopal registers, see
Summers, 72-87, and VCH. ^ j)]-i, Lichfield. 169.

* The MSS. which contain the Gen. Prol. (except the non-heretical first
chapter) would presumably have been written for Lollards. Cf. Bodley, 277,
written for Henry VI, where the scribe desisted after copying the first
chapter.

XIV] PECOCK 361

other man towards making the English tongue a vehicle for
theologicaUtreatises. The Lollards had written their reasoned
theological treatises in Latin, and had been original only in their
attempt to issue EngUsh paraphrases of them for the instruction
of the lewid ; Pecock went further, and was the first theologian
to write hjs-xeasoned. treatises in English. ^

Pecock's career and writings are sufficient in themselves to
shew that in the mid-fifteenth century LoUardy was still a
force^still claimed the Bible as the sole final authority, and was
still a niovement in favour of English scriptures. Pecock was
ordained in 1422, and in 1431, a period of great acti\dty against
the Lollards, was appointed to the mastership of Whittington
College^. From this time he interested hnnsel£chiefly in seeking
to conYJnce individual Lollards by argument, and in writing
English theological treatises to that end. He sought to prove
to them that reason or the "moral law of kind" was the final
authority_iQi_the interpretation of the Bible, and that reason
was qn__the_si_de of the catholic apologetic, — a theory which
commended itself neither to the orthodox nor the Lollards.

"A syllogism well ruled," said Pecock, "is so strong and so
mighty in all kinds of matters, that though all the angels of heaven
would say that his conclusion were not true, yet we should leave
the angels' sa5dng, . . . and trust more to the proof of thilke syllo-
gism 2.. . .Certes this inward book. . .or scripture or law of kind is
more necessary to Christian men, and is more worthy, than is the
outward Bible and the kunning thereof, as far as they both treat of
the more part of God's law to man^."

Pecock's personal acquaintance with the Lollards is known
from his own words: and his evidence about the prevalence and
nature of Lollardy is therefore valuable.

I have spoke oft time, and by long leisure, with the wittiest and
kunniugest men of thilke said sort, contrary to the Church, and
which have been held as dukes among them, and which have loved
me for that I would patiently hear their evidences, and their motives,
without reprobation. And verily none of them could make any
motive for their party as strong as I myself could have made
thereto-.. . .Two things be the principal causes of heresy in the lay
people which be cleped Lollards, . . . the first is this, overmuch leaning

^ Repressor oj Over Much Blaming of the Clergy, ed. Babington, C; RS,
1S60, I. xii. 2 Book of Faith, 43. * Repressor, 52.

362 THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

to scripture, and in such manner wise as it long[eth] not to holy
scripture to receive^.. . .Who that will walk among the people now
living in England, far and near, and will attend, hearken, hear and
see how diversely divers persons been in their conceits set, he shall,
among all the diversities, hear and know that many of the lay people
which cleave and attend over unrulily to the Bible . . . protest and
acknowledge that they a^I not fetch and learn their faith at the
clergy of God's whole Church in earth; neither they as for learning
and kunning of their faith will obevJLo the clergy or to the church:
but they will fetch and learn their faith at the Bible of holy scripture,
in the manner as it shall hap them to understand it^.

He stated elsewhere also that the Lollards were chiefly in error
about holy scripture, believing that no ordinance was to be held
a law of God unless it were grounded on theJBible, and that every
meek and humble Christian could not fail to understand truly
and duly holy scripture ^ He objected to the Lollards that the
Bible gave no information on their cherished tenet of the lawful-
ness of English translations of the Bible:

Also thou shalt not find expressly in holy scripture, that the New
Testament should be written in English tongue to laj^men, or in
Latin tongue to clerks, neither that the Old Testament should be
written in English tongue to laymen or in Latin tongue to clerks:
and yet each of these governances thou wilt hold to be lawful*.

He objected also to the Lollardslemphasis on the practice of
Bible. reading; they think, he said.

They need nothing unto the school of God's law and service save
holy scripture alone, and that thereto holy scripture sufhceth. . . .
They ween themselves for to kun at full and substantially and
pithily holy scripture, for that they kunnen by heart the texts of
holy scripture, and kunnen lush them out thick at feasts, and at
ale-drinking, and upon their high benches sitting^.

He argued with them that it was reasoaahlp. to., leave the
interpretation of the. Bihlp- to-the clergy as specialists: just as
men who wished to understand charters would appeal, not to
laymen, but to "justices or sergeants or famous kunning appren-
tices of the king's law ^" : and men who had a ship on hand would
trust to the wits of carpenters, not to their own: so a "right and

1 Book of Faith, 114. ^ Id. log. ^ j^ 3^ 5.

* Id. 119. s Repressor, i. 129. ® Book of Faith, 228.

XIV] LINCOLN LOLLARDS 363

due understanding of the high and hard writing of our belief in
the Bible" ought to be sought from those trained in divinity.

Pecock had become bishop of S. Asaph in 1444, and of
Chichester in 1450: but his Lancastrian sympathies and the
dangerous nature of his anti-Lollard ap^tingp^ir brought him
into unpopularity, and finally into sjispidoiL-QiJifimsy. He was
cited to appear at Lambeth in 1457, and forced to recant his
doctrines at Paul's Cross in that year. Finally he resigned his
bishopric, and died in captivity in Thorney Abbey.

Although Pecock had no great following among the laity,
certain admirers of his books, or possibly Lollards, w^ere pro-
ceeded against at about this time. An inquiry was made in 1457
in the diocese of Ely for the possessors of Pecock's writings, and
in consequence Robert Sparke of Reach, John Crowd of Cam-
bridge and John Baile of Chesterton were forced to recant their
errors as_iollards^. In the same year William and Richard
Sparke, of Somersham, Huntingdonshire, also recanted-.

LoUardy in'sLincoln'^ at this period was vigorous, but probably
unconnected with the teaching or tenets of Pecock. James
Wyllys confessed that he had read through the epistles of S. Paul,
the Apocalypse, and the gospel of S. Luke in English, and that
he had bought the manuscripts from a man of Bristol; and
Geoffrey Symeon afterwards acknowledged that he possessed
an EngHsh book of the holy gospels, which he had of the said
James*. William Ayleward confessed that he had often "talked
of the gospels and holy scriptures, declaring in English the
gospel of Nicodemus in judgment, according to the letter^."
Henry Smith confessed that he had heard Ayleward speak of
possessing a copy of the gospel of S. John «. John Baron gave a
full account of the English books, for the possession of which he
was suspected: he had "one of the life of our Lady, of Adam and
Eve, and of other sermons, the mirror of sinners, and the mirror
of matrimony; the second book of the tales of Canterbury, and
the third book of a play of saint Dionise'." Geoffrey Simeon,

1 Gray's Register, Ely, f. 130 b; cf. EDR, 1907, 42.

" Chedworth' s Regis er, Lincoln, f. 12 b.

* Chedworth' s Register, 1452-71. is not quoted by Foxe, and is unpublished.
I am indebted for the following references to Miss C. B. F'rth; cf. VCH,
Lines, II. 41, 46. * Chedworth' s Reg. I. 62. ^ Id. f. 61.

« Id. i. 62. ' Id. f. 62 b.

364 THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

again, confessed that he had allowed John Goose to read through
the English gospel which was in his keeping, and the same John
also borrowed a book belonging to a man called Baron. In the
latter, Goose acknowledged, was written a confession in English,
which had lately been found erroneous by the bishop of Lincoln^.
§ 4. After the repression of Pecock and his followers, the
records of the existence of T-nllarrly are ff^w for the npvt twenty
years : nevertheless, heresy was to be found in Lincolnshire,
Amersham and Henley on Thames in 1462, and a LoUard was
burnt in 1466 2. In Somersetshire Lollardy still piersisied, and
in 1475 Stillington's register declared that there were still many
heretics in the diocese^. In London the record of Lollardy is
continuous, for in i^S^tJ^tephen Swallow, a layman of the parish
of Wylie, abjured his heresies in the presence of the archbishop
of Canterbury and four bishops. His heresies were of the
ordinary later Lollard type, and he said he had held and taught
them for over thirty years ^ — a period extending back to the
agitation against Pecock. A Lollard was burnt in 1485. and
nincof them abjured their errors at Coventry in i486 ^ In 1491
John Russell, bishop of Lincoln, "wearied this year 1491 at
Oxford with many heretics," copied out with his own hands long
extracts from Walden's book on the sacraments, "against the
Wyclifhtes, whose most insane doctrines have infected many of
the common people of our English rehgion." He ordered there-
fore that these extracts should remain in the registers of his
successors, so that they and their assistants might be more pre-
pared for inquisitions into heretical pravity^. In 14Q4 Joan
Boughton was burned, openly declaring herself a follower of
Wycliffe ' ; she was over eighty, and must have been well to do,
for she is described as the " mother of the lady Young," who also
held Lollard opinions. In the early months of ^496 five Lollards
stood at Paul's Cros^ ^^^ Vipr^;'^ and in October five stood there

^ Chedworth's Reg. S. 62, 62 b. ^ Summers. 86-7.

3 DH, Bath and Wells, 146.

* RS, Literae Cantuar. iii. 312-14. ^ Summers, 87.

® Univ. 156. The extracts themselves are in a fifteenth century hand,
though the copy of the bishop's note is in one of the seventeenth century'.
Foxe states that many Lollards abjured, and some were burned, in the
diocese of Lincoln under the next bishop, William Smith, 1495-1514, and
still more under bishop Longland, 1520-47, AM, iv. 219.

7 AM, IV. 7.

XIV] SIXTEENTH CENTURY LOLLARDS 365

together, "with the books of their lore hanging about them,
which books were at the time of the sermon there burnt, with
- the faggots that the said Lollards bore^" The next year a heretic
was burnt at Canterbury 2, and in 1499 fourteen did open penance
at Paul's Cross, and an old man was burnt at Smithfield ^, while
in 1506 the prior of S. Osyth's and five other heretics did penance
at Paul's Cross ^. In 1506 too William Tylsworth, of the diocese
of Lincoln, was burned, and other burnings occurred at Missen-
den and Amersham ^. From this time onwards heretics were tried
in much greater numbers, and the records of their trials are
accessible, so that their use of English Bibles can be studied with
some certainty. For these intermediate heretics, however, be-
tween about 1430 and 1509, we have only the bare mention of
their abjurations or burnings, and no account of their trials. The
eaili^^ T n11arH<; hnwpvpr, before 1 43 1, uscd English Bibles and
learned passages from them by heart, and the later ones, after
1511, used them_much more frequently, because books were
relatively cheaper. Since there was no change in the character
of Lollardy during the intermediate period, it would be rash to
infer without evidence that their practice in the intermediate
period was not the same. It is thus probable that a certain number
of LqUards at any time throughout the century may have been
possessors of English Bibles, or single biblical books, for they
certainly set store by them. It is unsafe also to argue that there
were no Lollards rich enough to own English Bibles ; for, apart
from the evidence that they gave relatively large sums for them,
we possess one or two existent manuscripts of Bibles which
almost certainly belonged to Lollards. One of the later versions,
for instance, written about 1430, has the whole Bible and the
whole General Prologue, which would scarcely have been copied
by or for any orthodox user; and there is a note in the scribe's
hand against a verse in Exodus mentioning the bondage of the
children of Israel to Pharaoh, which says: "Thus the peple
farith now, for fere of the prelatis more and lesse^." Abuse of
the tyranny of "prelates '^was constant among the Lollards, and

1 Kingsford, 208-11. ^ Id. 222, 327.

=> Id. 226, 229, 232. * Id. 261.

* AM, IV. 123. For the Buckinghamshire heretics in 1506 and 151 1, see
also DH, Oxford, 258.

« FM. I. Ivi, CC.C. Camb. 147.

366 THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

this note and the presence of the General Prologue together
render the Lollard provenance of the manuscript reasonably
certain. Again, the manuscript containing " Pervie's " notes and
monogram, written in about 1427, belonged to a Lollard, for
besides containing the General Prologue, it has a long Latin
letter of the parish priest of "Chedingfold," written to cardinal
Beaufort in answer to charges of Lollardy^.

After 1508-9, the references to Lollard ownership of English
Bibles are precise and frequent. In 1509 Richard Hillman of
Coventry confessed that he had the Lord's prayer and the
salutation of the angel, and the creed in English, and "another
book he did see and had, which contained the epistles and
gospels in English 2"; and between 1509 and 1519 Christopher
the Shoemaker was accused of Lollardy, inter alia, because "he
read to John Say out of a little book the words which Christ
spake to his disciples 3." Between 1511 and 1521 a long list of
abjurations occurred, and it is specially noticeable that the
witnesses against the accused always mentioned the possession
of English biblical books, or the recitation of English prayers, or
even abihty to read English, as the principal sign of Lollardy.

James Brewster, who was burned in 15 11, confessed to a list
of errors which included " having a certain little book of scripture
in English, of an old writing almost worn for age," and in the
same year William Sweeting was accused of "having much con-
ference with one William Man, of Boxted, in a book which was
called Matthew^." John Higgs was charged with having in his
custody a book of the four evangelists in English, and about
15 17 John South wick was accused of having the book of the
four evangehsts, a book of the epistles of Paul and Peter, the
epistle of S. James, a book of the Apocalypse, and of Antichrist,
of the Ten Commandments, Wychffe's Wicket, etc., in Enghsh^.
Once when "old Durdant," his wife, his son Nicholas Durdant

1 FM, I. Ixi, Dubl. A. i. 10.

2 AM, IV. 135. For his use of English prayers, cf. the accusation against
John Smith, 1509, that he held that a man was bound to know the pater
noster, etc., in Enghsh, id. 7; and for the detection of certain Lollards be-
cause they had learned the creed, pater and ave, etc., in English, id. 225.

3 Id. IV. 217: from Longland's Reg.

* Id. IV. 215, 6. For the Coventry martyrs of 1511, see DH, Lichfield, 177.
5 AM, IV. 178, 207.

XIV] LOLLARDS' ENGLISH BIBLES 367

and his son's wife, David Durdant and Robert Carver were at
dinner with the witness's children and their wives, he bade a boy
there standing to depart out of the house, that he should not
hear and tell, and did recite unto them certain places out of the
epistles of S. Paul, and of the gospels^. It was deposed further
that Robert Pope had certain English books, and that John
Phips read the gospels in English; moreover, the latter had
suddenly burned his books, and when the witness told him "he
was foul to blame, for they were worth a hundred marks," John
had answered that he "had rather burn his books than that his
books should burn him-." Nicholas Durdant, it was said, used
to read to others parts of the epistles of S. Paul, and the gospels:
and he had desired those assembled not to tell that he had any
such English books in his house ^, lest he should be burned for
the same. John Butler^ was accused of reading to his brother in
a certain book of the scriptures; while Richard Butler ^ pre-
sumably the brother, was elsewhere accused of having at divers
times "erroneously and damnably read (aloud) in a great book
of heresy of Robert Durdant's certain chapters of the Evange-
lists in English, containing in them divers erroneous and damn-
able opinions and conclusions of heresy." There can be small
doubt that the book from which he read aloud the chapters of
the gospels in English was a copy of the later version of the
Wyclifiite Bible, and that the "damnable opinions and con-
clusions of heresy" occurred not in the gospels themselves, but
in the General Prologue.

John and Joan Barret, and John Scrivener, again, were
accused of possessing, reciting and lending the gospels of SS.
Matthew and Mark, and the epistle of S. James, and others were
accused of listening to the reading of a certain epistle of S. Paul.
John Newman was present at a reading of the scriptures, and
others were accused of learning the pater noster, etc., in English.
Alice Brown and John Tracher were accused of teaching and

* Id. 226, 230. - Id. 226, 237, from Longland's Reg.

* He was the son of "old Durdant," the leader of a Lollard school, and
owner of Iver Court at Staines. It was deposed against old Durdant, that
three Lollards had sat up all night in his house, reading in a book of scrip-
ture, and that Joan Cocks had desired Durdant her master "that he, being
a 'known man,' would teach her some knowledge of God's law."

•^ AM, IV. 227 ^ Id. 178.

368 THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

learning the beatitudes in English. John Butler and Thomas
Geffrey had a scripture book in English, which the bishop took
from them: they had also taught and learned from the same.
Thomas Man was accused of reading from Genesis, Richard
Ashford and others of reading in "a certain little book," whilst
Ralph Carpenter had "certain books of the Apocalypse in
English, and divers such books." Robert and Jenkin Butler
were suspected for "reading two hours together in a certain
book of the Acts of the Apostles in English, at Chesham," while
the wife of Robert Pope had certain books in English, including
an English primer. John Morden and Richard Ashford were
accused of having in the house a book of the gospels, and other
chapters in English, and Ahce Sanders of giving I2d. to buy a
certain book in English, and attempting to buy English books
at other times. " Geldner the elder " and others had been present
at a reading of the epistle of S. James in English, while Thomas
Tykill had lent a book of the gospels in English. Joan Gun had
instructed another in the epistle of S. James, and Thomas Africh
had "held conference in the gospel of S. Matthew^." Richard
Collins had "a book of Luke and one of Paul," and elsewhere it
was stated that he had quite an English library, including
several books of the Bible, the hours of our Lady, and the Prick
of Conscience ; his wife Alice CoUins was a famous reciter of the
scriptures at meetings ^. Thomas Scrivener had a book of epistles
in English, and Bennett Ward and others had the gospels of
Matthew and Mark. Edward Pope had the gospel of S. Matthew
in English, William Halliday the Acts of the Apostles, Thomas
Philip and others had been reading in English biblical books, and
John Harris's wife had been "talking of the Apocalypse" and
other biblical books. John Edmunds and "many others" had
possessed English biblical books, and Robert Collins had been
" reading a certain thick book of scripture in English." The wife
of Thomas Widemere was accused of reading the Bible in English,
and yet another Collins, John, and his wife, "for bujdng a Bible
of Stacey for 20 shillings." John Baker and John Hakker were
accused for reading English scriptures, and Thomas Vincent for
giving Hakker a book of S. Matthew in English. John Heron

1 AM, IV. 226-34. ^ ^^' 234, 6, 5, 8, 9.

XIV] RICHARD HUN 369

had a "book of the exposition of the gospels fairly writ in
English^," and Robert Bartlet had read to his brother "a parcel
of scripture beginning thus: James, the servant of God, to the
twelve kinds." John Jennings was detected because he had
carried about certain books in English: and Thomas Chase be-
cause he had been heard to recite words from the gospels and
epistles. Agnes Ashford also had taught the words of the gospel,
the beatitudes, etc., by heart to James Morden.

These cases of Lollardy were nearly all collected from episcopal
registers by Foxe, bishop of Hereford, for his Acts and Monu-
ments. The later registers have not yet been published: but
there is no reason to doubt that when Foxe states that he is
quoting an episcopal register, his extracts are accurate copies
in the sense that, though he may omit matters inconvenient for
his case, he does not insert spurious stuff. This may be verified
from the earlier Hereford registers, which have now been pub-
lished in full 2, and from the Lincoln registers, which have been
published in extract^. The most interesting case of a Lollard
Bible reader related by Foxe from the register of the bishop of
London* is that of Richard Hun, for sir Thomas More was
present at his trial, and inspected his English Bible, — gathering
his ideas of the heresy of the Wycliffite versions from the General
Prologue, which it contained^. Hun, a Merchant Taylor of London,
was committed to the Lollards' Tower for suspected heresy, and
tried on 2 December, 15 14. He was accused of various heretical
beliefs, and of having in his keeping divers English books pro-
hibited by law, including the Apocalypse in Enghsh, the epistles
and gospels in Enghsh ^ Wycliffe's damnable works, and other
erroneous books. After this preliminary examination he was
sent back to the Lollards' Tower, where he was found strangled

^ AM, IV. 234-40. The record of Agnes Ashford's trial gives the exact
passage from S. Matthew, v., which she taught Morden, and which he went
five times to her house to learn; and twice he went to her to learn the
beatitudes. Agnes was bidden recite these passages before the bishop, and
commanded to teach them no more to any man, and especially not to her
children.

- CYS, Gilbert, 1375-89; Trevenant, 1389-1404. Cf. VCH, Bucks, i. 302.

3 DH, Lincoln, Venables, E., and Perry, G.; and see Chedworth's register,
P- 363; VCH, Bucks. I. 202-3.

* Fitz James, see AM, iv. 173.

* See pp. 7, 14. « AM, iv. 184.

D.w. B. 24

370 THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

next morning: the bishop of London declared he had hanged
himself, but the jury, after going into the case with the thorough-
ness of amateur detectives, gave a verdict of murder. At this
inquest, further evidence of Hun's heretical views had been
collected by Dr Hed from the prologue of his English Bible,
which the bishop kept; and the thirteen articles under which
his heresy was tabulated are largely taken from the General Pro-
logue^, which contains plenty of passages which, as sir Thomas
More said, "good Christian men did much abhor to hear." The
last of these thirteen articles ran:

He defendeth the translation of the Bible and the holy scriptures
into the English tongue, which is prohibited by the laws of our
mother, holy Church-.

The bishop of London then had the articles of heresy of which
Hun was first accused, and the thirteen articles put forward at
the inquest, published at Paul's Cross, and offered to let any man
who doubted whether the points were "contained in this book
or not" come to him, and examine Hun's English Bible, with
its General Prologue, for himself, — an offer of which sir Thomas
More must have availed himself. Hun was then formally con-
demned of heresy, and his corpse burned at Smithfield, sixteen
days after his death. Foxe expresses his surprise that so early a
martyr for the protestant cause should have been in the habit
of going to daily mass, and have had his beads in prison with
him: but his objection shews lack of historical perspective. Like
the early Wyclifhtes, Hun probably considered himself no heretic,
but a devout and enlightened catholic.

Thus the history of English Lollardy between the death of
Wycliffe and the introduction of Tindale's New Testament offers
ample evidence of its connexion with the use of English Bibles.
The historical evidence shews that the Lollards made the English
translation of the Bible and consistently practised its use, while
no orthodox person or manual ever suggested its use by lay
people. Certain noble personages and certain nuns probably
had license to read it: but the evidence is much less strong for
these than for the Lollards.

S^5. In the light of the evidence now discussed it is easy to
understand sir Thomas More's statement about vernacular
1 AM, IV. 1 86. 2 Id. 1 86.

XIV] EXPLANATION OF MORE'S ATTITUDE 371

Bibles, together with Cranmer's misapprehension, and the refer-
ence to EngHsh Bibles in the preface to the English Bible of
1609. Caxton, with his special knowledge, had been aware that
manuscripts of English Bibles existed: More, of more exalted
rank, had seen them in the houses of the great, and knew that
they or Saxon manuscripts existed in many old abbeys of
England. Perhaps his generalisation was made from the
Wyclifhte Bible at the Carthusian house at Sheen, for More had
friends among the London Carthusians; perhaps he had seen
the copy at Sion. He had to reconcile this fact with the con-
stitutions of Oxford of 1408, and to do so, he had but to accept
Lyndwood's exposition of them. Bibles made before the days of
the late master John Wycliffe were exempted from the pro-
hibition: therefore More jumped to the conclusion that those he
had seen must have been copies of such Bibles. Like Innocent
III in his letter to Metz, like the Cologne jurists of 1398, like
Purvey in his determination, and like master John Wycliffe him-
self, More would not admit that translations of the Bible could
be heretical per se; therefore he fell back on the supposition (to
which much colour was lent by Tindale's work) that Wycliffe's
Bible must have been prohibited because the translation itself
contained heretical matter. He was quite without the oppor-
tunity of knowing that the only Bibles which Arundel actually
excepted in his prohibition in 1408 were unreadable Anglo-Saxon
ones, or that the Wycliffite translation apart from its heretical
prologue was itself an excellent and scholarly version. He did
not even know that, before Wycliffe's day, the only classes in
England who could often have afforded to buy biblical manu-
scripts were French-speaking. Much less could he have known
that the psalter and Apocalypse were the only books to be turned
into English prose before Wycliffe, and that not fifty years before.
Thus in the history of the Wyclifhte Bible two misappre-
hensions have been successively held by certain scholars. These
have assumed first, that there were mediaeval English Bibles
before Wycliffe, and secondly, that the late fifteenth century
manuscripts of the English Bible were copies of these, and not
of the Wycliffite version. The prohibitions of 1408 started the
first theory, by exempting Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and Rolle's
psalter : Lyndwood made the theory more definite : Caxton went

24 — 2

372 THE LOLLARDS AND ENGLISH BIBLE READING [CH.

further and attributed the pre-WycHffite mediaeval Bible to
Trevisa: More followed Lyndwood: Cranmer, anxious to find
precedents for translations, followed him and Lyndwood: and
the preface to the English Bible of 1609 followed them all. Not
one of these writers shews evidence of independent and critical
research. They could not have guessed a priori, nor had they
discovered by historical study, that both in Italy and in Germany
orthodox nobles and convents of sisters sometimes possessed
vernacular Bibles derived ultimately from Waldensian trans-
lations, without the slightest knowledge of their heretical origin ;
or that the use of Wycliffite texts by the orthodox in England
was merely a parallel occurrence.

The attitude of the mediaeval Church to biblirqi frQTic]9tfr.pc
has thus been seen to have been one of tolpratinn in pHnriplp
and distrust in practice. Latin Christianity was founded on S.
Jerome's translation of the Vulgate, and could not well forget it.
The eastern Church preserved the primitive attitude in the
matter, and did not interfere in the making of Russian or Bul-
garian translations. The first hostile pronouncement of the
western Church to translations was that of Gregory VII, and
for two important motives. First, he wished to keep Latin as
the speech of all debatable territories between the eastern and
western Churches, and thus to retain those lands for the western
obedience. Secondly, he did more than any other pope to separ-
ate the clergy from the laity, and also make them worthy of
forming the teaching branch of the Church. From his time
onwards the orthodox prejudice against lay knowledge of the
biblical text hardened, except in the case of the most exalted
personages, who were always allowed to possess them if they
wished ; but popular "Rihip readingr and the learning of the trans-
lations by heart, were found to lead inevitably to their exposition
by lay. people, and gYentually Jo heresy. For this reason, the
popularisation of such translations was forbidden in France by
the synod of Toulouse in 1229, and a little later in Spain and the
Empire. Innocent Ill's letter to Metz, capable of opposite inter-
pretations, was embodied in the Decretals. When_iii±hodox, or
semi-orthodox, teachers began to teach lay people the practice
nf rnntpTnplativp praypr thpy were the first orthodox religious
leaders to recommend the reading of the scriptures to lay people.

XIV] CONCLUSION 373

This began in Germany, in 1386 : here the teachers recommended
translations; in England it began about 1380, by teachers who
used the Vulgate, Certain scholars, like the lawyers of Cologne, and
the Lollard doctors at Oxford and Prague, contended that biblical
translations were lawful: but the far more influential Gerson and
the fajthers of Constance thought otherwise, and these carried
orthodox opinion with them. Only from about 1509, and only
in Germany, was there an orthodox movement for the populari-
sation of the scriptures by means of translating the gospel at
mass, and allowing ordinary lay people the use of German gospel
and epistle books, — generally glossed, that they might not be
exposed to the danger of misinterpreting the bare text. There
was no contemporary and similar movement in England: for,
while the chief fifteenth century agents of it in Germany, — the
Brethren of the Common Life, — were orthodox, the parallel
movement of English Lollardy was heretical. Germany was the
only country in Europe where orthodoxy allowed the study of
biblical translations to lay people before the Reformation, and
this only from about 1509 onwards, when the principles of the
Renaissance were already bearing fruit, in a soil specially pre-
pared by the earlier efforts of the Waldensians, Beghards,
Gottesfreunde, and Brethren of the Common Life. In England,
as in the rest of Europe, the great majority of those familiar
with the text of the Bible in English were Lollards, and sir
Thomas More recognised the general state of affairs when he
made his Messenger complain that "the Bible is in so few folks'
hands."

APPENDIX I

I, The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, 1395, and the
dating of the General Prologue to the Old Testament.

The passage from the General Prologue referring to the "last
parliament" (quoted partly supra, p. 257), is a close allusion to
the third of the Twelve Conclusions, and a verbal copy of part
of the Thirty Seven Conclusions, an expanded treatise to the
same effect (see pp. 282-3), issued at the same time. The
Twelve Conclusions were written in English for presentation to
parliament in 1395, and begin: "We poor men, treasurers of
Christ and His apostles, denounce to the lords and commons of
the parliament certain conclusions and truths for the reformation
of Holy Church of England." These twelve conclusions, without
the prologue mentioning parliament (Gairdner, i. 43), were also
written in Latin and nailed to the door of Westminster abbey
and S. Paul's cathedral (a usual mediaeval manner of pub-
lishing an academic thesis, cf. the similar action of the Lollard
Pateshull in 1387; Trevelyan, 327). The original English form
is printed in EHR, xxii. 2g2, from the MS. of Roger Dymok
(see p. 283). The Latin form was copied by Walden ; see FZ, 361,
and retranslated by Foxe into EHzabethan English, in AM. The
third of the conclusions is that referred to in the Gen. Prol. (see
supra, p. 257) : "The thirdde conclusiun, sorwful to here, is that
the lawe of continence annexyd to presthod, that in preiudys
of wimmen was first ordeynid, induceth sodomie in al holy
chirche," etc., "quod lex continentiae injuncta sacerdotio, quae
in praejudicium mulierum prius fuit ordinata, inducit sodomiam
in totam sanctam ecclesiam," FZ, 361.

The question has been raised whether the petition was actually
read in parliament, or only circulated among individual lords
and commons in London, since the Conclusions are not found on
the parliament roll. There is however no reason to doubt
Walden's statement: "Sequuntur conclusiones LoDardorum. . .
porrectae pleno parliamento regni Angliae, regnante illus-
trissimo principe Ricardo secundo, anno eius circiter xvii."
FZ, 360, Summers, 52, state that sir Thomas Latimer and sir
Richard Stury presented the conclusions in parliament, as do
Trevelyan, 329, and Gairdner, i. 43. Stubbs, Constit. Hist. 11.
512 has no doubt that the petition was actually presented in
parliament: cf. Polit. Hist, of England, iv. 128, and for the parlia-

APP. I] PARLIAMENT OF I395 375

ment of 1395, Rot. Pari. iii. 330. At the date, parliamentary
procedure was, of course, much less formal than later: petitions
presented to the king in parliament were redrafted by the royal
lawyers before enrolment on the parliament roll as bills, whether
the petition received the royal assent or not. The Twelve Con-
clusions were no doubt considered too scandalous for redrafting
and enrolment : but this does not disprove the apparent meaning
of the words " porrectae . . . pleno parliamento," "addressed to
parhament in session," as inferring an actual reading of the text.
Lollard tracts of a nature as offensive to the orthodox had been
circulated vigorously since 1384, and there is no reason to think
the mere circulation of these conclusions as a pamphlet would
have sent an archbishop and a bishop in hot haste to Ireland,
recalled Richard from his campaign, drawn down his wrath on
the Lollard knights, particularly Stury, and occasioned even a
warning letter from the pope to the king. Boniface IX wrote
also to the two EngHsh archbishops in Oct. 1395, exhorting them
to greater zeal against the Lollards, and quoting the Twelve
Conclusions, not from the Latin form nailed to vS. Paul's, but
from the English form addressed to the lords and commons of
parliament: the Lollards, he says, "call themselves poor men of
the treasure of Christ and His disciples" (CPL, iv. 515), thus
quoting the prologue, not found in the Latin form.

The Lollard disendowment bill of 1410 (see Gairdner, i. 64,
Walsingham, 11. 282-3, Kingsford, 65, 295, xxxvii) is an exactly
similar case of a bill, stated by contemporaries to have been pre-
sented in parliament, and not found enrolled in the parliament
rolls, see Rot. Pari. iii. 623; here also no doubt because its con-
tents were considered too wild and revolutionary. For petitions
undoubtedly presented and not enrolled, between 1347 ^^^ 1401.
see Stubbs, 11. 602-10, iii. 34; Gairdner, i. 20; supra, 297.

The Thirty Seven Conclusions is a much longer English tract,
alluded to in the Ttvelve Conclusions: "and though these matters
be here shortly knit, they be in another book longly declared "
(EHR, XXII. 295). They are printed by J. Forshall as the
Remonstrance against Romish corruptions in the Church, and
frequently alluded to by modern writers as the Ecclesiae Regimen,
from the title given to one MS. by a late scribe. The second
corollary to the third conclusion, or article, sets forth the charge
of sodoni}^ in a paragraph of 32 lines, which agrees almost word
for word with the passage relative to that subject in the Gen.
ProL, FM, I. 51. Comparison leaves no doubt that here the
writer of the Gen. Prol. quoted from the Thirty Seven Conclusions,
a political pamphlet of 1395; his allusion to the "last parha-
ment " must therefore be to the parliament of 1395.

376 IDENTITY OF JOHN PURVEY [app.

Bale {Scriptorum, 1557, 541), among a list of works he ascribes
to Purvey, includes two tracts which may have been different
forms of the Twelve Conclusions: the Ad parliamentum Angliae.
Prima conclusio est haec, quod and the Ad regem et concilium.

Lewis accepted the reference to the "last parliament" as to
the parliament of 1395 (FM, i. xxiii), but FM challenged the
dating without due reason. "Imputations of this nature were,
no doubt, frequent among those opposed to the celibacy of the
clergy, and might very probably have been brought under the
notice of parliament previously to 1395," id. xxiv. But (i) not
merely the sense of the charge, but the wording of the passage
in the Gen. Prol. is borrowed from the Thirty Seven Conclusions
of 1395; (2) there was no Lollard agitation in parliament such
as can possibly have been referred to for ten years on either side
of 1395^. The Lollards' agitation in the parliament of 1385 was
the nearest anterior one, and had dealt only with the proposal
to confiscate certain temporalities of the clergy {Polit. Hist, of
Eng. IV. 97). The nearest posterior one was the Lollard disen-
dowment bill of 1410. There is thus no record of a Lollard
petition or parliamentary agitation between 1385 and 1410, except
in 1395: and in neither 1385 or 1410 was the charge of sodomy
brought forward, as it was in the unique instance of 1395. For
the dates of the parliaments about these years, see Stubbs,
Constit. Hist. ii. 505, 513. FM are here clearly wrong, and Lewis
right.

The Gen. Prol. was thus certainly written soon after Jan. -Feb.
1395, and before the next parliament of Jan. -Feb. 1397.

2. The Identity of John Purvey with the author of the General
Prologue to the Old Testament, and the second Wycliffite
version.

The author of the General Prologue was a Lollard, as is shewn
in repeated passages against simonient and covetous prelates,
references to them as "antichrist," the denunciation of indul-
gences, needless oaths, image-worship, etc. (FM, i. 2, 3, 29-34,
35, 40, 43, 49, 51, 52, 59, 60). He was also undergoing persecution
at the time of writing, and exhorting his followers to undergo
it, even to the death. {Id. 2, 15, 30, 33, 37, 43, 49, 57, 58, 60.)
He was also a scholar of great learning, and quoted freely from,
learned doctors and particularly Lyra, the best contemporary
commentator on the Hebrew text; the description of the four

1 The 25 Arts, of 1388 (see p. 461) do not accuse the clergy of vice, and
were not presented to parliament. See also for Pateshull's charges in
1387, Chron. Ang. RS, 377; Walsingham, 11. 158.

I] EVIDENCE OF HIS AUTHORSHIP Zll

stages of the making of the translation, etc., shews a scholarly
care unequalled by any contemporary translator.

The Gen. Prol., as has been established (pp. 374-6), was not
finished till 1395: so that this scholarly Lollard was enduring
persecution in that year. The only Lollard of sufficient
scholarship to have written the Gen. Prol. and later Wycliffite
version, who had not recanted before 1395, was John Purvey.
Hereford, Purvey, Repingdon and Aston were the four most
eminent Lollard scholars in 1382: Repingdon and Aston re-
canted in that year: Hereford was still a Lollard preacher, with
Purvey, in the town of Bristol in 1387 (FM, i. xvii), but he
had recanted and received royal letters of protection before 1391.
In 1393 he was presiding over the trial of Walter Brute (see
p. 286) ; by 1394 he was chancellor of Hereford cathedral. The
other most eminent Lollards, like Swinderby, Bell and Brute,
had also all recanted. Brute the latest, in 1393. The only im-
portant Lollard scholar, and the only representative of the old
circle of Oxford Lollards holding out in 1395, was Purvey, who
did not recant till 1401 {Hen. IV, i. 180).

Subsidiary circumstances which are in favour of Purvey's
authorship include (i) Walden's and Knighton's references to
his scholarship, — the "Lollard's library," etc. (see pp. 233-5).
(2) His unique relationship to Wycliffe, as his secretary: if
Purvey helped to finish the early version, and was responsible for
the later, this explains the belief of the well-informed continua-
tor of Knighton that Wycliffe translated the whole Bible, and
Hus's statement that all Englishmen believed Wycliffe to have
translated the Bible (see pp. 239-40). (3) The author of the
Lollard glosses on the gospels and of the Gen. Prol. was the
same man, from his use of a set of pseudonyms (see pp. 276-7).
There is some reason for attributing these glosses to Purvey
(see p. 276), who was "letted fro preaching" in 1387; the
glosses were finished before 1394; the time necessary for com-
pleting these, and the later Wycliffite version, is allowed for,
between 1384 and 1395, and is consistent with what we know of
Purvey's career. Neither the Lollard glosses nor the LV could
have been the work of a mere Lollard hedge-priest. The writer
of the Gen. Prol. dealt only with the O.T., and had no occasion
to mention his glosses on the gospels (though he incorporated
the prologue of one of them, see p. 281) : but he says he has made
glosses on Job, the major, and part of the minor prophets (FM,
1. 37, 41). This seems to refer to prologues on these books,
descriptive of their contents, as the Gen. Prol. is for the other
books of the O.T., which indicates that the Gen. Prol. was re-
garded as a gloss on the rest of the O.T. The author would thus

378 IDENTITY OF JOHN PURVEY [app.

consider he had glossed all the books of the Bible, but the gospels
at far greater length. (4) There are touches in the Gen. Prol.
consistent with Purvey's breadth of view (see p. 285) : e.g. the
Oxford scandals are not stated as a certainty, but "deem they
that know": the exhortations to accept persecution meekly, and
pray for their enemies' conversion, are frequent: the long ex-
planation of the old fourfold interpretation of scripture is quite
unrevolutionary. (5) There is evidence that Purvey was in-
terested in the defence of biblical translations. Walden states
that Purvey was specially responsible for the translation of
Wycliffe's Latin works (see p. 234), and therefore it is probable
that the English form of Wycliffe's De Officio Pastorali is Pur-
vey's. This is a fairly close translation, the patristic references
and quotations being omitted: but chapter 15 in the English
form is an interpolation, with no counterpart in the Latin
(EETS, OS, 74, 429). It is introduced with some irrelevance to
defend the English translation of the Bible, — not one of the
normal subjects of Lollard apologetic. The chapter complains
that "friars and their fautours say it is heresy to write God's
law in English, and make it known to lewid men," and then
gives reasons justifying this course. The precedents quoted are
mainly the same as those alleged in the fifteenth chapter of the
Gen. Prol. : the gift of tongues at Pentecost, S. Jerome's trans-
lation, the French Bible, and — the only precedent which the
translator could then find in English history — the teaching of
the pater noster in English, especially in the York play. The
following sentence is very similar to that in the Gen. Prol. ex-
plaining the right method of translation: "Well I wot default
may be in untrue translating, as might have been many defaults
in turning from Hebrew into Greek, and from Greek into Latin,
and from one language into another. But live men good life,
and study many persons God's law, and when changing of wit is
found, amend they it as reason will." The translator of the De
Officio Pastorali had certainly a special interest in defending
biblical translation, and Walden's evidence identifies him with
some probability with Purvey. (6) There is also some manu-
script evidence pointing to a connexion between Purvey and
the Wycliffite versions, if the monogram and notes found in a
certain manuscript of Lollard ownership be actually that of
Purvey, as Forshall and Madden belieVed^. The name in the
monogram, which is small but quite distinct, is spelt J. Pervie^;

1 Dublin A. i. 10, see FM, i. Ix.

* Professor Craigie calls my attention to the difference in spelling, which
seems to him to militate against the identification of this monogram with
Purvey's. The mediaeval spelling of proper names often differs considerably,

I] THE THIRTY SEVEN CONCLUSIONS 379

and the writer has also inserted before marginal notes, correc-
tions and prologues which he added to the original manuscript
the common Latin distich:

Christus homo factus
J. P. prosperet actus.

The manuscript contains substantially the New Testament in
the early version and, following it, the Gen. Prol. It has also
one or two tables or summaries, and a letter from the curate, or
parish priest, of Chedingfold to the bishop of Winchester, answer-
ing an accusation of Lollardy which had been brought against
him. This was written in or after 1427, and J. Pervie's additions
to the manuscript are not earlier. Pervie added various pro-
logues from the later version to the several books of the New
Testament, in the spaces left blank for prologues by the original
scribe^, and he also corrected the text in the margin and between
the lines. If the monogram is Purvey's, he must have used and
corrected the curate of Chedingfold's book: but at the end of his
hfe.

Finally, the evidence on which Forshall and Madden relied to
prove Purvey's authorship of the Gen. Prol., though not con-
clusive, serves as confirmation to the inference from date. The
Thirty Seven Conclusions of the Lollards, and the passage quoted
from it in the Gen. Prol., have been mentioned above^. There
are also many other long passages so verbally similar as to
render it certain that they are quotations from the one book
to the other^. The Thir. Sev. Con. is, on the Carmelite Laven-

even by the writers of their own names : but I have not gone into the records
of the Buckinghamshire Purveys to see whether this spelling actually
occurs. He is called Pyrvey in 1377 (see F]\I, i. xxiv) : Purueye in Dd. 8. 16,
p. 428 (Walden's Doctrinale): Peruey in 1387, VCH, Worcs. 11. 35, from
Wakefield's Reg. It was at the date usual to initial additions or cor-
rections made to the text: and it is not impossible that Purvey, as a
fugitive should have used this book for a time, and made the additions.
But the point is immaterial, as the MS. cannot have been that in which
Purvey wrote the prologues originally.

^ The prologue to the gloss on Luke is similarly copied in a blank space,
in red ink, in Bodl. 143.

' See pp. 257, 374.

* They are quoted side by side in FM, i. xxv-xxvii. The Thir. Sev. Con.
were certainly completed by Feb. 1395, and the Gen. Prol. completed shortly
after: but probably the first part of the Gen. Prol., the long analysis of
biblical books, was begun before the anglicising of the Thir. Sev. Con., in
the months preceding Feb. 1395. This appears, because though the passage
about clerical vice was quoted (see p. 257) from the Thir. Sev. Con. in the
Gen. Prol., some of the other parallel passages appear to be quoted from the
Gen. Prol. in the Thir. Sev. Con. (because they occur in the same order,
which is that of the biblical books, proper to the Gen. Prol., and not natural,
except as a quotation, in the Thir. Sev. Con.). That is, the books were pre-
pared together, though the Gen. Prol. was finished last.

38o IDENTITY OF JOHN PURVEY [app.

ham's evidence, a work of Purvey^, or prepared under his
editorship, so that Lavenham felt justified in regarding it as his.
The many common passages in the Thir. Sev. Con. and the Gen.
Prol. could thus be explained by common authorship, and the
Gen. Prol. could be attributed to Purvey on that ground alone,
if not with finality, at least with some probability.

Mr Compston in EHR, xxvi. 739, doubts Purvey's editorship
of the Thir. Sev. Con.^, on the ground that Lavenham, when
reciting Purvey's heresies and errors, cites in three instances
errors or authorities not to be found in the Thir. Sev. Con., as
printed by Forshall (Purvey on marriage, FZ, 391; the citation
of Cestrensis, id. 397, § 13; and the Lollard disendowment bill
of 1410, in id. 393, §1). It is clear however that Lavenham was
quoting, not the Thir. Sev. Con. alone, as Mr Compston took him
to mean, but Purvey's confession of 1401 (the order of which he
follows for the first five sections, cf. FZ, 383-91 with id. 400-4),
and at least two of Purvey's works, perhaps both written in the
book said by Lavenham to have been taken from Purvey in
prison (possibly with other minor tracts). The word Lavenham
used, "haereticum libellum," implies a political tract, like the
Thir. Sev. Con., and Lavenham certainly quoted the latter in
some places (cf. FZ, 383, § i, with Ec. Reg. 80; FZ, 384, § 3,
with Ec. Reg. 79; 389, §§ 2, 3, with 57-8; 379, § i with 52). The
third instance cited by Mr Compston as not in the Thir. Sev. Con.
(the Lollard disendowment bill, see Kingsford, 65) is specially
mentioned by Lavenham as being quoted from another tract
from the one he had been quoting earlier (manifestum est in
quodam alio tractatu speciali, FZ, 393). The passage on mar-
riage, not in the Thir. Sev. Con., was probably from the now non-
existent tract on marriage, attributed to Purvey by contem-

* See p. 297.

2 See Mr H. F. B. Compston's article in EHR, xxvi. 738. He prints a
short Latin form of the Thir. Sev. Con., which is more moderate in tone
than the longer, English, form. He believes, from this difference in tone,
that the expanded English portions are not the work of the original author
of the Latin tract. This is less certain than appears at first sight, because
the English versions of Latin tracts at the date were always more violent
and unmeasured, being intended for a popular instead of an academic
audience. Mr Compston's description of the scholarly and moderate author
of the Latin conclusions noticeably fits Purvey. The English expansion was
intended for use as a political "libellum" in 1395: it would almost certainly
have been prepared in collaboration with the London Lollards, of whom
Purvey was the "special standard bearer," and perhaps with Stury and
Clifford. Whether in Purvey's own words or not, the English form reflects
the more popular and violent temper of his followers, rather than his own :
but the violence in itself is not enough to disprove Purvey's authorship of
the English version. The Latin form may be the form of the work addressed
Ad regent ef concilium (see p. 376).

1] DATE OF LATER VERSION 381

poraries. Thus Lavenham either quoted an expanded form of
the Thir. Sev. Con., to which the Lollard disendowment bill was
tacked on, or as is more likely, he quoted a MS. of Purvey's
containing the Thir. Sev. Con. and other tracts. These six
points, all pointing to Purvey's authorship of the Gen. Prol.,
taken with the inference from the date of the Gen. Prol., render
his authorship of that work historically certain.

3. MS. evidence of the date of the later Wycliffite version.

The MSS. of the LV which are dated as earliest in the list
given by FM are:

6. Royal i. c. viii.: Bible: before 1420.

7. Royal I. c. ix.: Gen. — Job: not later than 1410.

46. Lambeth 25: Pentateuch in EV, remainder of O.T. in LV:
c. 1400.

54. Laud 33: Epistles: "perhaps before 1400."

66. Bodl. 554: psalter: c. 1400.

71. Fairfax 2: Bible: dated 1408,

76. Dugdale: Epistles: c. 1400.

83. Gough Feci. Top. 5: N.T. : c. 1415.

113. Caius 179: Matt, and Mark: "soon after 1400."

114. Caius 343: N.T. and calendar dated 1397. -j
119. Emmanuel i. 2. 13: N.T. ; copy of Caius 343' calendar, J

122. Jesus O.B. 13: Matt. — Luke: begins EV, before 1400, con-
tinues LV c. 1400.
141. York XVI. N. 7: N.T. : "not much after 1400."
154. Acland: Bible: 1410 "or perhaps earlier."
161. Ashburnham 6: Acts: "not later than 1400."

The earliest dated MS. of the LV is Caius 343, the calendar at
least of which has been copied into Emmanuel i. 2. 13: this
appears on careful examination of the two MSS. Caius 343
(dated by Dr M. R. James as a fourteenth century MS.) has no
indication of being an original MS. of the LV: it appears to have
been copied by a professional scribe, and there are no corrections
or erasures. The same scribe has undoubtedly written the whole
MS.; f. I has "Here bigynne); a newe testament...." The
gospels are copied, ff . 1-86, and then a calendar of the saints' day
lessons is inserted, before the remainder of the N.T. The calendar
is dated by a note of the same scribe as written in 1397. There
are no indications that the calendar was not written at the same

382 ORTHODOX WRITERS ON VERNACULAR BIBLES [app.

time as the rest of the MS. : it has incipits from the LV: so that
the copying of a N.T, in the LV in 1397 is estabhshed.

In Emmanuel i. 2. 13 the hands of the calendar and N.T. are
apparently different, though contemporary. The calendar is here
placed at the beginning of the N.T. and has the Sunday as well as
the saints' day lessons. The Latin page headings, and certain
misreadings, shew that it is copied from Caius 343, and not
vice versa.

The text of the beginnings and ends of the O.T. lessons quoted
in the calendar of Caius 343 are of interest : they are from neither
Lollard version, and appear to be a translation made from the
Commune sanctorum and Propriiim sanctorum of the missal, not
the Vulgate. The months Jan. — April inc. (Caius ff. 86-88) have
13 O.T. lessons, omitting duplicates, and of these eight are cer-
tainly from neither version, one resembles the EV, one resembles
the LV, and three I cannot identify. The N.T. lessons have been
copied by the scribe from the LV, which he had at hand in the
MS. It appears likely that he translated the O.T. quotations
(which consist only of 3 or 4 words as incipits and explicits),
himself. No previous prose translation of the O.T. saints'
day lessons, accompanied or unaccompanied by homilies, is
known.

FM, I. xhdi, Iv, consider that Bodl. 277 and C.C.C. Camb. 147
(written c. 1440 and c. 1430 respectively) represent a revision
of the LV by some scribe. It is possible on the other hand, as
Professor Craigie suggested to me, that they go back to a form
intermediate between the EV in the glossed gospels, and the
LV, as represented by the bulk of the MSS.

4. Reformation and post-Reformation writers on the history

of vernacular Bibles.

Cardinal Gasquet brought forward the view that the Wyclilfite
Bible was the "authorised" version of our catholic forefathers
in The Old English Bible and other Essays, 1897 and 1908, where
he also sought to minimise the hostihty of the mediaeval Church
to the popularisation of vernacular Bibles. This view hardly does
justice to the reasons which made scholars and reformers like,
e.g. chancellor Gerson, declare against them. Apart from the
historical correctness of cardinal Gasquet's contention (that the
Church, speaking generally, encouraged the reading of vernacular
Bibles), his theory is one new to orthodox writers on the subject
of the attitude of the mediaeval Church. A long string of earlier
catholics have sought to shew, not that the Church encouraged

I] AFTER THE REFORMATION 383

biblical translations, but that she did not do so in mediaeval
times, and was perfectly wise in not doing so. See p. 385, for the
attitude of the Carthusian monk against whom Erasmus wrote;
p. 389 for the Apology of Frederick Staphylus, translated and
published in England in 1565 ; Jacob van Tombe's Claerbewys van
lie warachtige Kerke Christi, Antwerp, 1567 (quoted Boekzaal,
342), where he says that there are many passages hard to be
understood in S. Paul's epistles, etc., so that our holy forefathers
"wisely decreed that the unlearned laity should not read the
Bible," but made for them suitable books of devotion instead.
Harney, 216, mentions certain doctors who wrote against
biblical translations before the council of Trent : cf . John Driedo,
or Nys, ti535, a doctor of Louvain, who wrote a tract denying
that S. Paul's epistles could be understood if translated into the
vernacular: Matthew Ory, a friar preacher, who wrote a French
tract in 1544, denying that holy scripture ought to be com-
municated freely to all ages, sexes and conditions : and John de
Broully, another friar preacher who printed a tract to the same
effect. Harney gives, pp. 216-26, details of the works of other
writers against translations during the period of the council of
Trent: e.g. Perez de Ayala, Van der Bundere, and N. Grenier.
James Ledesma and the cardinals Bellarmine and Stanislas
Hosius wrote against biblical translations or touched upon them
in their works on other subjects; Frederick Staphylus, too,
wrote in German against translations, and his work was trans-
lated into Latin by the Carthusian, Lawrence Surius; the
theologian, Peter Malphus, and others, opposed translations. On
pp. 228-41 Harney gives the names of many theologians who
opposed them after the council of Trent. In particular, several
learned doctors wrote to the same effect when Antoine Arnauld,
pere Ouesnel and the Jansenists desired a more liberal attitude
of the Church towards vernacular versions, though without
asking for their unlicensed use. Arnauld wrote in 1680 {(Euvres,
1783, VIII. no. x), De la lecture de I'ecriture sainte, against a tract
of C. Mallet, De la lecture de I'ecriture sainte en langue vulgaire,
Anvers, 1682. Mallet, doctor of the Sorbonne and archdeacon
of Rouen, sought to set forth: That it is not according to the mind
of God or of the canonical scriptures that ignorant people should
read holy scripture, hut that this is reserved to priests and doctors
alone (Arnauld, (Euvres, viii. 4). Mallet had quoted from a tract
published in 1661, Collectio Auctorum translationes scripturaruni
in linguas vulgar es damnantium {(Euvres, viii. 3 and 283).
Arnauld in several tracts and letters opposed the view that holj^
scripture ought not to be read by the laity, as did a Belgian
writer condemned for Jansenism, John Neercassel, apostolic

384 ORTHODOX WRITERS ON VERNACULAR BIBLES [APP-

vicar-general of the Belgian provinces in 1663, who wrote a
Tractatus de lectione scripturarum. The Dominican, Harney, him-
self then wrote in answer to both Arnauld andNeercassel a learned
history of vernacular versions, treating the biblical, patristic and
mediaeval periods, and claiming that in the latter the Church
had always, with good reason, withheld scriptural translations
from the laity {De sancta scriptura Unguis vulgaribus legenda:
rationahile obsequium Belgii Catholici, per Martimtm Harney:
adversus quaedam scripfa D. Antonii Arnaldi, Louvain, 1693).
The Jansenists continued to struggle for biblical translations,
and among the propositions of Quesnel condemned in 171 1 were
those advocating the unrestricted right of the laity to use them
(artt. Lxxix. Lxxx.: The reading of holy scripture is for all
people; lxxxi., The holy obscurity of the Word of God is not a
reason for dispensing the laity from reading it, and artt. LXXix.,
Lxxxii.-Lxxxv. to the same effect; La lecture de la sainte Bible
en langue vulgaire, Malon, J. B., 1846, 11. 521). In 1793 another
catholic history of biblical translations was written by T. G.
Hegelmaier {Geschichte des Bibelverbots, Ulm, 1783), in which,
while the author applauded the more liberal attitude of church-
men of his day towards translations, he emphasised the pro-
hibitory attitude of the mediaeval Church towards them (e.g.
he considers that Innocent Ill's letter to Metz, 1199, was meant
to discourage lay Bible reading, Bibelverbot, 128, and emphasizes
the share of Gregory IX in the prohibitions of the council of
Toulouse, id. 135). The encyclical of Leo XII to Spain in 1824
exhorted all pastors to "be instant in season and out of season
. . .that the faithful entrusted to you . . .shall be persuaded that
if the sacred scriptures be everywhere indiscriminately public,
more evil than advantage will arise thence" (Putnam, 11. 28).
J. B. Malon, canon of Bruges and Librarian of Louvain, wrote
in 1846 the above mentioned history of biblical translations : it
dealt mainly with the post-Reformation period, but did not
question the restrictions laid by the Church upon translations
in the middle ages, or their wisdom : p. v, " La lecture de la sainte
Bible ... est utile a tous les fideles qui la font sous la direction
de I'Eglise, avec un esprit pieux, humble et docile. Elle est
funeste a toutes les personnes qui la font avec orgueil, temerite
et presomption. L'Eglise catholique est dans le vrai, lorsqu'elle
interdit cette lecture aux fideles qui ne sont pas disposes a s'y
livrer avec fruit." For early Spanish and Italian writers see
p. 50, n. I.

I] ERASMUS 385

5. Quotations from Reformation and post-Reformation
writers on vernacular Bibles.

{a) Apologia D. Erasmi Rot. adversus Dehacchationes Petri
Sutoris. {Erasmi Opera, Leyden, 1706, ix. 739.)

Erasmus in this tract defended himself from the attack of a
French Carthusian, Petrus Sutor (? Le Couturier), formerly a
doctor of the Sorbonne, who had attacked his emendations and
paraphrases of the Vulgate text. I am indebted to Mr P. S.
Allen for the information that Sutor had published, at Paris in
1524-5, diDe translatione Bibliae et nouarum reprohatione interpre-
tationum, in chap. 20 of which he attacked Erasmus with great
violence. Erasmus answered by publishing this Apologia in 1525,
in which he recounted many of Sutor's arguments against lay
Bible reading, and supplied the answers. Erasmus says that:

When he accuses me for trying afresh to give clearness to the text
of the New Testament, he alleges that the old humble and common
style was pleasing to the Holy Spirit, and that through it holy
scripture can be read and understood alike by the learned and the
unlearned [Humanist scholars and their opponents], and therefore
he calls it the "common Bible." But if he says this sincerely, why
does he in tact blame those who translate the Bible into the vulgar
tongue? (ix, 784.)

Sutor has gently derided as incredible Erasmus' assertion that
Latin was once the common tongue of Italy, Spain and Gaul,
and that the Vulgate was translated for that reason; he has
asked "how then the Latin language could have perished there? "
and in arguing against popular Bible reading has made use of the
popular mediaeval quotation, Nolite sanctum dare canihus, neque
mittatis margaritas ante porcos. Erasmus answers several of his
arguments against vernacular Bibles, inter alia:

"The woman," he says, "who is occupied in reading the sacred
volumes neglects her domestic duties,". . .and perhaps the soldier
will be slower to go forth to fight! and a great danger that would
be ! . . . And if the sacred volumes ought to be taken from the common
people because from this source the Waldensians have fallen into
error: so also they ought to be taken from the learned, because Origen
and Arius and Wycliffe and Hus have from them also drunk in their
heresies.. . ."It would be a great danger to constitutions of human
origin, if the people understood that they were not in the holy books."
. . ."In many places in the sacred volumes the vices of pastors and
princes are reproved, and if the people were to read them, they would
murmur against those set over them." (ix. 785-6.)

D. w. B. 25

386 ORTHODOX WRITERS ON VERNACULAR BIBLES [app.

(6) An Exhortation to the diligent study e of scripture made by
Erasmus Roterodamus. And translated into Inglish. (1529).
Not paginated.

I would desire that all women should read the gospel and Paul's
epistles, and I would to God they were translated into the tongues of
all men, so that they might not only be known of the Scots and Irish-
men, but also of the Turks and Saracens. ... I would to God that the
ploughman would sing a text of the scripture at his plough-beam;
and that the weaver at his loom with this would drive away the
tediousness of time. I would the wayfaring man with this pastime
would expel the weariness of his journey. And, to be short, I would
that all the communication of the Christian should be of the scripture ;
for in a manner, such are we ourselves, as our daily tales are. . . .
Neither truly is it meet . . . sith the reward of immortality pertaineth in-
differently unto all men, that only the doctrine should be banished from
the secular, and possessed only of a few, whom the commonalty call
divines, or religious persons. . . . We cannot call any man a Platonist,
unless he have read the works of Plato. Yet call we them Christian,
yea and divines, which never have read the scriptures of Christ. . . .
If we covet to withdraw our minds from the tedious cares of this
life; why had we liefer learn the wisdom of Christ's doctrine out of
men's books, than of Christ Himself, which in this scripture doth
chiefly perform that thing which He promised unto us, when He said
that He would continue with us unto the end of the world? For in
this Testament He speaketh, breatheth and liveth among us in a
manner more effectually than when His body was presently conver-
sant in this world. The Jews neither saw nor heard so much, as thou
mayest daily both hear and see in the scripture of Christ.. . .What a
marvellous world is this : we keep the letters which are written from
our friends: we kiss them, and bear them about with us; we read
them over twice or thrice. And how many thousands are there
among the Christian which are esteemed of great literature, and yet
have not once in their lives read over the gospels and epistles of the
Apostles. . . .They that profess Saint Benedict's rule. . . (observe their
example), learn it by heart, and drink it into their hearts. Saint
Austin's adherents are not ignorant in their rule. Saint Francis'
friars do know, observe, and advance their patron's precepts: . . .Why
set they more bj^ their rule which was written of a man, than the
whole Christianity by the holy scripture, which Christ did equally
preach unto all men ? . . . I would our first and unformed speech should
sound of Christ; I would our ignorant childhood should be informed
with Christ's evangely . . . . The evangely doth represent and express
the quick and living image of His most holy mind, yea, and Christ
Himself healing, dying, rising again, and to conclude, all parts of
Him, in so much that thou couldst not so plainly and fruitfully see
Him, although He were present before thy bodily eyes.

I] PARIS THEOLOGIANS, I527 387

(c) Censures issued 17 Dec. 1527 by the Theological Faculty at Paris
on certain propositions of Erasmus in defence of biblical trans-
lations.

Mr P. S. Allen kindly informs me that these Censures were
published as the Determinatio Facultatis Theologiae in schola
Parisiensi super quamplurimis Assertionihus D. Erasmi Rotero-
dami, by J. Badius Ascensius, July 153 1. On f. vii of this book
it is stated that the Faculty became disturbed about Erasmus'
attitude in July 1526, though Harney's source for supplying the
exact date, 17 Dec. 1527, for the pronouncement of the deter-
mination, is not clear. The four propositions of Erasmus had
(with others) been attacked by N. Beda in 1526, and Erasmus
replied in a Prologus directed against him in August of that year,
and republished in March 1527 (see Opera, ix. 442). The quota-
tions given are from Harney, 209-14; cf. Had. 4381 b. §9.

Erasmus: Preface to S. Matthew. "I would desire that the sacred
books should be translated into all languages." Censure: "Although
the sacred books might be translated into all languages, in that they
are in their nature holy and good : yet the great danger of permitting
the promiscuous reading of them, when translated without any
explanation, is sufficiently shewn by the Waldensians, Albigensians
and Turlupins, who have spread abroad many errors through this
cause.. . .Wherefore this kind of translation is by law condemned."

Erasmus: Preface to S. Matthew: "They cry out, that it would be
an outrage if a woman or a tanner should speak of the sacred books."
Censure: "Rightly is it. . .esteemed an outrage, that the unlearned
and the simple should read the holy books translated into their own
tongue.. . ."

Erasmus: Preface to S. Matthew: "With my good will, let the
husbandman read the holy books : let the smith and the weaver read
them." Censure: "Holy scripture bears witness that the simple are
as children, to be fed, as S. Paul says, with milk.. . .Wherefore it is
not a means suitable for these simple peopJe, that they should read
the sacred books promiscuously, translated into the vernacular: but
the means which befits them is that which the Church has appointed,
the hearing of the word of God, and attendance at sermons. Neither
is the use of certain of the sacred books prohibited to them, if they
are provided with suitable explanations, tending to edification, and
if also such books are read by them piously and soberly, without pride
and arrogance. Therefore this proposition, set down without any
limitation, shews that its assertor is of unsound doctrine."

The fourth proposition was: "Neither shall I forbid to any man the
reading of the prophet Ezechiel, or of the Song of Songs, or of any
of the books of the Old Testament." Censure: "Since, by a decree of
the apostolic see, the reading of many such books was long since
prohibited to the laity: (and to those learned in God's Word among

25—2

388 ORTHODOX WRITERS ON VERNACULAR BIBLES [app.

the Jews, the reading of the said books, and of the first chapter of
Genesis was prohibited thirty years ago, by the advice of weighty
scholars) : the aforesaid proposition is asserted rashly and impudently.
For the same cause for prohibiting the reading of such books exists,
as there was when the decree of Innocent III was drawn up about
these matters, a fragment of which is incorporated in his own words
in the De Haeret., as the Cum ex injuncto."

Erasmus answered these censures (Harney, 212-14), in a
work printed in 1532 at Antwerp, where he appeared much more
ready to accept some restriction of the reading of vernacular
Bibles. On the decree of Innocent III to Metz, however, he
stood firm:

For if the decree of that pope, or any other, was at some period
brought forward against the rashness of men, I do not consider that
it is binding on the whole Church. . . . But if this measure is demanded
by the malice of present day men, I will not cavil at the constitutions
of popes, or of the Roman see.

{d) El Nuevo Testamento. Francisco da Enzinas. 1543.

This work was condemned and put upon the index, as the
work of a protestant scholar: but Enzinas hoped for recognition
at the time of its publication. He dedicated his book to the
emperor, Charles V, and pleaded for the recognition of the lawful-
ness of Spanish translations of the Bible. There are, he says,
many opinions that it would be well that holy scripture should
be translated into the vulgar tongue, and many to the contrary,
with which he does not agree; three reasons have moved him to
make the translation.

(i) If the Jews understood the conversion of their forbears,
as related in the Acts and the New Testament generally, they
would be the more readily converted. For twenty years past,
he says (pp. 3 6-4), there has been sharp debate in Spain as to the
lawfulness of vernacular scriptures, and men of much zeal have
striven to prevent the printing of such books.

(2) The second reason is the honour of the Spanish nation.
"There is no nation, so far as I know, which is not permitted to
read the sacred books in its own tongue, saving only Spain
alone " (p. 5). In Italy there are many versions, . . .in France so
many that he cannot count them. ... In Flanders and the Rhine
towns such new versions are issued almost daily, and that in the
most important cities. And so in Germany,. ..England, Scot-
land, and Ireland. Spain alone remains lagging behind; where-
fore he cannot see why that in Spain is prohibited which is with
reason conceded to all the other nations.

I] STAPHYLUS 389

(3) If biblical translations were evil (p. 6), or likely to lead
to bad results, his majesty Charles V or the pope would have
prohibited the possession or printing of such books by law : but
though Charles V has made laws with such diligence, he has not
made, so far as Enzinas knows, any such law, and therefore this
translation is not illegal. He then gives many precedents for the
translation of the scriptures : the Jews used Chaldee paraphrases :
the early Christians wrote in Greek, then the common tongue of
the east: other nations, like the Egyptians, Arabs, Persians,
Ethiopians and Latins, all turned the scriptures into their own
tongues. Afterwards in the Latin Church :

This custom that the holy scripture should be read in the language
which all understood was lost, not because it was not a good custom,
but because foreign peoples entered into Europe, and the Latin
language became lost in the vernaculars, and they began to use
others. But the Church continued to use [Latin] as before. Which
custom has remained till recent times: but only in these parts of
Europe. In Greece the people retain the ancient custom, and so in
Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria, Palestine, Persia, India, the East and
all quarters of the globe. So that it is not a new custom, nor I alone
in approving it : nor can it be a bad thing, since it has endured for so
long a time in the Church of God, and so many nations approve of it,
and the catholic Church holds it for good. (p. 7 b.)

(e) The Apologie of Fredericus Staphylus, counseller to the late
emperor Ferdinandus; Intreattng, Of the true and right under-
standing of holy Scripture, Of the translation of the Bible in
to the vulgar tongue. Of disagrement in doctrine amonge the
protestants. Translated out of Latin in to English by Thomas
Stapleton, Student in Divinite. Antwerp. 1565.

Of the true and right understanding of holy scripture (p. 32). It is
therefore a wonderful slander that these men say of the catholics:
"That hitherto the gospel and the word of God hath been banished
from the Church, kept in hucker mucker, and at the length under the
pope to have been utterly extinguished: but now is revoked into
light."

To refute the accusation, Staphylus shews that :
Both now and in all ages, we read the gospel in our churches, we
preach the word of God in our pulpits, and interpret it to the people:
we express it by outward ceremonies, rites and gestures, such as we
have received of our forefathers, even from the primitive Church and
the Apostles' time.

Of translating the Bible into the vulgar tongue (p. 64). Another thing
that the Lutherans object unto me is, that they saj, it hath been by
my means and counsel procured that the Bible is no more read in the

390 ORTHODOX WRITERS ON VERNACULAR BIBLES [app.

vulgar tongue : especially as Luther translated it. Now although I re-
member not that I ever said or wrote that the lay men ought not to
have the Bible in their vulgar tongue, yet if I had done so, it had been
no great trespass. For surely I could never yet find in holy scripture,
that the common people ought of necessity to read scripture. But
that of the reading thereof much schism and the destruction of many
souls hath proceeded, daily experience teacheth us. And holy writ
wameth us, where our Saviour thus speaketh: It is given to you to
know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest in parables,
that seeing yet they see not, and hearing they understand not. Who are
these unto whom our Lord saith : To you it is given, etc. ? Surely the
Apostles and their successors, the rulers of Christ's flock. And who
are they that should learn by parables? surely such men, as were
better not to know the mysteries, lest misusing them they procure
themselves a greater damnation. For precious stones ought not to be
cast before hogs, and such of all likelihood are the lay ignorant people.
. . .[The Hebrew text used by the Jews could be read only by the
elders, not by the common people], lest perad venture the precious
mysteries of the old law should be cast before hogs, the rude and
curious people. These threescore and ten elders also very miraculously
translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek, before the coming of Christ,
they only having the knowledge of the text. So in like wise the three-
score and twelve disciples were chosen to read and understand the
mysteries of holy writ, unto whom priests have succeeded (as in the
principal sees and bishoprics in Christendom we are able to show).
Therefore it is evident, that unto priests, pastors and bishops (whom
God hath placed to oversee His Church), the grace of the Holy Ghost
always assisteth to interpret and expound the mysteries of holy
scripture by parables unto the people, as far as for them is requisite.
Wherefore the unlearned laymen may well be admonished to refrain
from all curious and greedy reading of holy scripture. First, lest
rashly and unadvisedly they take upon them the office committed by
God to the elders, to priests and bishops ; . . . also, because experience
of our time hath taught, how dangerous it is that every lay man,
craftsman, labourer or otherwise, all without discretion, should read
and examine scripture at their pleasure. . . . [Could ignorant men
displace all physicians, and apothecaries, and use their drugs with
profit?] Surely so it is of the holy scripture translated into the vulgar
tongue and so made common for all men. For the lay man may so
read them, and pick out medicines for his appetite: but for lack of
skill (as experience hath tried), he will cast himself down.. . .By this
similitude the unlearned may gather, how dangerous it is for him to
read the scripture in his mother tongue : especially with the intent to
interpret it as he shall think best himself. . . .

But here peradventure a man will demand: "Sir, if it be so, that
the reading of the Bible in the vulgar tongue be so perilous a matter,
how shall the unlearned lay man provide that he be not abused in
this case? For many there are among the laity that cannot refrain

Ij BOOK OWNERSHIP FROM PRINTED WILLS 391

from reading holy scripture, taking it for a great comfort What

part then of holy scripture might well be permitted them to read? "
For the whole corps of the Bible, were it never so well translated, yet
I doubt whether it were expedient for the lay [people] to read it.
For it might be an occasion of idle and light thoughts, if every girl or
young woman should read the stories of Lot and his daughters, of
Leah.. . .[Among the Jews it was not thought expedient that every
one indifferently should come lightly to high and secret mysteries] :
Nor hath it been without the singular disposition and marvellous
providence of God that, through all the west Church, the words of
His holy sacraments have among so many barbarous nations been
kept so long time in the Latin tongue, unknown and strange to the
common folk. . . . [Since there are many parts of scripture, not needing
to be known, not merely to the laitj', but to the inferior sort of clergy,
certain bishops of Rome have long ago set certain portions in the
breviary, distributed into the seven hours of the passion. This has
been translated into German, and the laity may use it, together with
homilies from the Fathers, distributed into the Sundays and holy days
of the year.]

6. Analysis of 7578 wills made before 1526 [the date of

Tindale's printed New Testament), to shew the relative

frequency of possession of English Bibles, French Bibles,

Vulgates, Latin service books, and English and French

devotional books ; from

[a) Printed collections of wills,

(&) Collections of wills printed in archaeological collections,
episcopal registers, historical monographs, etc.

(c) Single printed wills; single wills in MSS., and references to
bequests of books in chroniclers; Lollard trials in Acts
and Monuments, the Victoria County History, episcopal
registers, etc.

{d) Totals.

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APPENDIX II. DOCUMENTS

I. William Butler's Determination against biblical trans-
lations, 1401; also the burning of English Bibles previous
to 140 1.

The friars at Oxford had so long been opposing the lawfulness of
English Bibles for popular use, that the deUvery of friar Butler's
determination in the schools in 1401 needs no special explanation.
Bale however makes a curious assertion as to its occasion. In his
1557 6d. of the Illustrium Maioris Britanniae Scriptorum. . .Catalogus
...ex J. Lelando. . .collectus, p. 536 (Cent. vii. xxxix), he quotes
Leland, the Catalogi Franciscanorum and some unknown work of
Purvey on the subject of William Butler. He quotes Leland as
saying: "Legi scripsisse eum a.D. 1401 Determinationis nomine
libellum, contra translationem scripturae sacrae in linguam vul-
garem : postquam esset in Anglia, (ut testis est Purvaeus) procuranti-
bus f raterculis generale mandatum ut comburerentur. . . . Alexander
quintus, Rom. pont., qui et Franciscanus erat, huius factum nefarium
coniirmavit, damnando scripturas in sermonem vulgarem translatas."
Leland {Scriptorum, 1709, 11. 409) does not give the date 1401, so
that probably Bale supplied this from the MS. of Butler's deter-
mination, or else the date was in the Franciscan Catalogues. The
statement about Bible-burning is attributed to Purvey, which seems
almost too curiously appropriate to be a mere guess on Bale's part.
He himself attributes to Purvey some tracts which have not survived
to us, — but none apparently dealing with this subject: Purvey was
not well-known to Bale as a defender of English scriptures, nor hence
a likely subject of such a guess. The first part of Butler's deter-
mination (see p. 401) is now missing, and may originally have con-
tained some reference to the occasion of the determination : but Bale
expressly quotes Purvey, so that it is unlikely that these missing
folios were his source.

The tract Fifty heresies and errors of friars [Sel. Eng. Works, in.
393) is possibly Purvey's, and states that friars pursue poor priests
" both to bum them and the gospels of Christ written in English, to
most learning of our nation." Cf. Sel. Eng. Works, r. 129, an English
sermon of [?] Wycliflfe's, with its apparent reference to some anti-
vernacular statute: "as the high priests set the stone at the door of
Christ's sepulchre, so our high priests dread . . . that God's law should
quicken after this, and therefore they make statutes, stable as a
stone, and get grant of knights to confirm them. . .lest that truth of
God's law, hid in the sepulchre, burst out to knowing of the common
people. Well I wot that knights took gold in this case. "

Hus relates an anecdote with a reference to some edict : but it may
just refer to Arundel's constitutions. He says that:

400 BUTLER'S DETERMINATION [app.

" I heard from a faithful man of honest memory, Nicholas who was
called FauLfisch, that when he was travelling in England, he knew a
certain cook with whom he used to drink. And when the bishop
asked the cook why he read the holy scriptures in the English tongue,
contrary to the edict [contra mandatum], he defended himself by an
argument drawn from holy scripture. For when the bishop asked
him: 'Dost thou know with whom thou speakest?' he answered:
'With a bishop that is but man.' Then the bishop said: 'And dost
thou, a wretched little layman dare to argue with me in the matter
of holy scripture ? ' To whom he answered : ' Yea indeed . . . since the
most merciful lord Christ listened calmly to scriptural texts from the
devil, why then shouldst not thou, who art less than Christ, hear me,
a man? ' But the bishop was so angrythathe broke off the discussion^."

Faulfisch was at Oxford 2 Feb. 1407, when he corrected the MS. of
the De Veriiate, De Dominio Divino, and De Ecclesia^, which he took
back to Prague, and he returned to Bohemia in 1407, the month not
being known. Arundel's synod which dealt with English scriptures
did not meet till 7 November, 1407: so that FauLfisch's reference to
the "mandatum" would appear to refer to some earlier edict: though
it may possibly have been inspired by some conversation between an
Oxford cook and Arundel on his short visit, if Faulfisch left at the end
of the year.

The evidence is not enough to establish the issue of any edict
previous to Arundel's constitutions for the burning of English Bibles :
though there is no inherent probability that some were burnt, while
Gerson in Paris and the authorities at Oxford were hostile to them;
and while the procedure in heresy trials presided over by the Enghsh
bishops was so similar to that of the continental inquisition. AJex-
ander V had studied earUer as an Oxford Franciscan, and it is not
unlikely that the Oxford friars should have sought his help, or that
he should have given it. For a late fifteenth century inquisitor's
inquirj'^ of the pope, what he was to do with books of the scriptures
in German containing no glosses, since it was scarcely fitting to bum
them, see supra p. loi n. The episcopal inquisitors in 1400 would
possibly have been less scrupulous : and in any case, they might have
found plenty of Wyclif&te scriptures containing the heretical General
Prologue to burn. No special edict was needed for the burning of
English Bibles before 1401^.

Bale's statement was followed by Pits, Fabricius, Wadding, and
some later writers. Pits, an English Franciscan, writing in 1619,
paraphrased Bale from the true mediaeval point of view. In fr.
Butler's time, he says, p. 588, "the Holy Bible was translated into
the English tongue, and came promiscuously into the hands of work-
men and women, and now whosoever could read it reckoned that he

^ De Ecclesia, xviii. - EHR, vii. 307.

^ The episcopal inquisitors certainly took biblical books from the Lollards
before 1408: cf. William Smith in 1392 (supra, p. 278), and Thorpe's psalter
in 1407 (p. 354).

II] ENGLISH BIBLES WOULD BE INCORRECT 401

understood it: and hence a great contempt of divine mysteries."
Butler and others sought for a remedy; and hence "a pubUc edict
was made, that all these Bibles translated into English should be
burnt, lest the ignorant multitude should thence bj' themselves drink
in poison to their souls, whence led by their pastors they might have
drunk things profitable to salvation. When therefore these books
were burned, he put in writing the reason of the deed, and gave to
the light a learned work, entitled. Contra iranslationem Anglicanam."

This tract is here printed from Merton 68, ff. 202-204 ^- It begins
imperfectly, and at the bottom of the page a contemporary hand
has written: Quaere principium huius tractatiis fo. 119 praecedenti;
ff. 118, 119, 120 are however cut out, probably because, like the
similar determination of Palmer, they contained first a list of the
Lollard arguments in favour of an English translation, which would
attract notice when Arundel warned the authorities afresh to bum
all Wycliffite books. The handwriting is that of a professional scribe,
who misunderstood and miscopied certain passages.

In this and Palmer's determination, ae is printed for the mediaeval
e, capitals and a normalised spelling are supplied to proper names,
and c's and t's, u's and v's, i's andj's are normalised. Biblical refer-
ences are not appended when the scribe gives the chapter reference
correctl)^

Butler, contra iranslationem Anglicanam. (f. 202, col. i)
— intellexisse scripturam sacram et earn false composuisse ;
et multa secundum ilium sensum falsum disputasse in libro De
moribus ecclesiae catholicae^. Textus vero in quo erra\dt erat iste :
Quoniam propter te mortificamur tola die, ubi translatio Septua-
ginta interpretum sensum habet: Quoniam propter te morte
afficimur tota die. Sic constat quod libri si multiplicarentur
essent mendosi, qui cito legentes inducerent ad errorem: ergo,
periculosum esset tales libros scribere. Sed forsan pariformiter
argueret quis: libros in Latina nam^ esse legendos, cum aequali-
ter contingeret fore falsos. Huic dico, quod ecclesia ordinavit
universitates in quibus docentur scripturae et scribuntur libri,
qui si falsi sunt, facile possunt corrigi; quae politia non potest
commode^ servari stante multiplicatione tanta populi; nee
debent praelati hoc admittere, quod singuli ad libitum eorum
legant scripturam in Latinum translatam; quia, sicut experientia
satis docet, hoc fuit multis modis occasio incidendi in haereses
et errores. Non est ergo politicum ut quicunque, ubicunque,
quantumcunque voluerit se det fcrventi studio scripturarum.

* S. A ugustini Opera, PL, 32, col. 1310. The tract begins in the middle of
the first of the six main arguments of the determination. This was clearly,
that the multiplication of books entailed mistakes in copying, since even
S. Augustine in the work quoted argued concerning a passage where the
principal word had been omitted, as can be verified in the Patrologia.

" Perhaps for non. * MS. comede.

D. W. B. 26

402 BUTLER'S DETERMINATION [apP.

Item forsan aliquis diceret, quod scriptura sacra p[er]lecta
saltern reficeret gustum affectus pro qualibet eius particula
secundum sensum litteralem; sed contra hoc arguit beatus
Augustinus, libro De morihus ecclesiae catholicae^, artem tradens
in disputando procedendo Sic dicit: Naturae ordinem habere
se, ut, cum aliquid discimus, rationem praecedat auctoritas, ne
ratio infirma forsitan iudicetur; ideo hoc efficacius suadeo
auctoritate. Nam scribens Augustinus, epistola 39, Ad Pauli-
num^, de iudicio Dei occulto, quo quosdam approbat ad salutem,
quosdam reprobat ad poenam, tandem capit ie.yLium ad Col., Nemo
vos seducat^, etc., de quo textu PauUnus quaesierat, et notabihter
dicit: Dixisti, inquit Augustinus, ista obscura tibi esse, sed nunc
ego, inquit, sine caHgine intelligo, atque utinam, inquit Augus-
tinus, praesens de me ista quaesisses, nam in eo sensu quem mihi
in his verbis habere videor adhibenda est quaedam pronunciatio
in vultu et modo vocis, quae^ exprimi litteris non potest; ut ex
aliqua parte aperiatur quod ideo fuit obscurius quia non recte, ut
aestimo, pronunciatur. Cum ergo Paulino instructo in divinis
litteris non potuit Augustinus exponere scripturam in his,
quomodo a rudibus talibus scriptura sic lecta posset intelligi,
sed aliquem sensum ab eis non cognitum [intelligere deberent],
et tunc non reficeret gustum, sed potius duceret in errorem.

Item Augustinus Memorio episcopo^, epistola 55, dicit quod
aliquid scripturae difficillime [intelligitur, si] non assit qui dis-
putantium posset separare personas, et pronunciando servare
morulas verborum et sillabarum ut omnis exprimatur, sensum-
que proferant ^ aurium si feriantur genera numerorum. Cum ergo
in libro Ecclesiastes Salomonis, in quo connectuntur personae
sapientes et insipientes et sic personae virtuosae et vitiosae, et
sententiae litterarum sunt commixtae, sic quod difficile sit
perito theologo illas sententias sic ab invicem distinguere: cum
ergo Augustinus consulat Memorio (f . 202, 2) episcopo ut non legat
sine doctore libros Ecclesiastici [sic] ne ipsum legisse paeniteat,
si desit qui personas distinguit, qui sonat morulas sillabarum,
cum desit talis expressio, qua sensum aurium feriant genera
numerorum: conformiter, consulendum est vulgari populo ne
scripturam sacram legere cupiant, sed sint secundum lacobi

1 PL, 32, col. 1311.

2 PL, 33, col. 639, 640; a letter in which S. Augustine comments on
several textual difficulties to Paulinus.

3 Col. ii. 18. « MS. qui.

^ PL, 33, col. 369; whence bracketed words are supplied.

* The scribe has sensus quia. S. Augustine's words are sensumque
aurium feriant geneva ntimerorum. Butler himself has taken at least equal
liberties with S. Augustine's argument here, which deals directly not with
any book of the Bible, but with an abstruse work on music.

II] LAY PEOPLE SHOULD NOT READ THE BIBLE 403

consilium 1, veloces ad audiendum, et non praesumptuosi ali-
quatenus ad legendum^.

Confirmatur, secundo, haec ratio per Aristotelem, secundo
Ethicorum, sic dicentem: Opus morale, inquit, suscipimus non
contemplationis gratia, scilicet, ut sciamus, sed ut boni fiamus.
Sed differentia est sacrae scripturae ad alias scripturas, quia ipsa
[non] accipit verum et bonum, sed verum ut bonum, et nedum
ut bonum morale sed ut bonum gratuitum: ergo talis scriptura
est accipienda ut boni fiamus, et sic sciamus ut boni fiamus
gratuite. Ergo, cum, teste leronymo, aliquid latet in voce quod
non latet^ in cortice litterae, ut patet epistola 33, quae est de
omnibus divinaehistoriae libris*, in qua exhortatur Paulinum ad
addiscendum, et maxime per auditum, et hoc per exempla
Pauli, qui didicit ad pedes Gamaliel, qui postea adiit discipulos
in Jerusalem ut videret Petrum, ubi misterio hebdomadis et
ogdoadis futurus gentium praedicator instruendus erat : quilibet
habens zelum fervidum animarum potius deberet consulere ut
vulgus addi[s]ceret per auditum, potius quam legendo. Quia
ergo, secundum leronymum, audire sit modum melius per-
veniendi ad sacrae scripturae notitiam quam scripturam legere,
cum via audiendi sit melior, securior, atque expeditior quam via
legendi, et propter paucitatem mediorum tenenda: debet via
legendi prohiberi et via audiendi saepissime hortari.

Sed forte obicit quis, quod licet audire sit melius, parum in-
telligere vulgaribus sit bonum. Hie dico, quod lectio est in-
ductiva in errorem potius quam auditus; quod sic ostendo; nam
Augustinus, epistola 58^, describit errorem, dicens: Non mihi
videtur aliquem errare, cum aliquis nescire se scit, sed cum putat
se scire quod nescit. Sed sic putare, accidit per legere citius
quam per audire; ergo legere periculosum est, saltem vulgari
populo. Item Augustinus, Psalm. 50®, ad hoc notans: Auditui
meo, inquit, dabis gaudium et laetitiam, et exultahunt ossa; constat
namque ibi, secundum mentem beati Augustini, quod iste textus
fuit dictus in persona humilium illuminandorum, et nota quod
non dicit lectioni meae dabis gaiidutm et laetitiam, sed auditui.
Cum ergo gaudium et laetitia non lectioni scripturae sed ipsius
scripturae auditui sunt commissa, tenere tantum illam viam est
ipsis laicis magis tutum. Nam, dato quod populus legeret ad
alium sensum qui non est scripturae, de scriptura non haberet
tunc sententiam; secundum Augustinum, epistola 69, Ad
Maximam''; esset de his sicut de illis qui ferramentis medicin-

^ MS. concilium. * Cf. lac. i. 19.

* Sic: but paiet would seem to make better sense.

* PL, 22, col. 541. 6 PL, 33, col. 924.

« PL, 36, col. 593, 594. ' PL. 33, col. 1085.

26 — 2

404 butler"s determination [app.

alibus puniuntur, quae utique non ad vulnerandum sed ad
sanandum sunt facta. Sic, secundum mentem Augustini,
scripturae sunt ordinatae ad sanandum non ad puniendum;
ferrum ergo scripturae sacrae non debet dan imperito chirurgico,
ne propter artis imperitiam mors sequatur. Cavere ergo summe
debent pontifices infulati, qui legere, qui praedicare debent
scripturas; ne, unde perveniret utilitas, inde praeveniat mortis
calamitas.

Secundo, arguo contra assertionem praefatam ex radice de-
fectus intellectus humanae. (f. 2026, i) Nam tradit venerabilis
doctor Halys, prima parte Summae, distinctione secunda, articulo
tertio^, humanae naturae intellectum in duobus deficere propter
originalem peccati corruptionem ; nam deficit in his quae veris-
simae sunt et maxime sunt intelhgibiha, et in his quae minimae
sunt et minime intelhgibiha essent; ut patet, inquit, de esse,
motus et temporis; et ideo, inquit, sicut sensus deficit in ex-
tremis, scihcet in maxime sensibihbus et minime sensibilibus,
ita intellectus obtenebratus deficit; et ideo Aristoteles ponit,
intellectum nostrum se habere ad perfectissima naturae sicut se
habet ad solem oculus vespertilionis^. Propter ergo originalem
corruptionem pervenientem ex peccato Adae, corruptus est
noster modus inteUigendi. Et secundum postillatorem Petrum
lohannem^ super Gen. primum, nota naturae fuerunt prius nota
Adae in statu innocentiae, ita quod notitia rationis derivatione
speciei dimisit discursum rationis. Nam Adam per combina-
tiones qualitatum novit quod combinatio variaret gradum
specificum et quod determinaret hoc in tali specie ad diversa
indi vidua; sed adveniente corruptione intellectus iam non est
nobis cognoscibilis effectus per causam in contingentibus, sed
cognoscimus causam per effectum. His praemissis, praemittenda
sententia est beati Augustini in sua Dialectical, quod duo sunt
impedimenta veritatis, ne Veritas capiatur, scilicet obscuritas et
ambiguitas; inter quae hoc interest, quod in ambiguo plurima
se ostendunt, quorum quid potius accipiendum sit penitus
ignoratur; sed in obscuris parum aut nihil quod attendatur

^ The Summa Theologica of Alexander of Hales, ed. Cologne, 1622 ; torn. i.
p. 10.

2 Id. "intellectus noster se habet ad manifestissima naturae, sicut oculus
noctuae ad lumen solis."

' Petrus Johannes Olivi, a Spiritual Franciscan, and the author of com-
mentaries on the Apocalypse and Gospel of S. John, was much influenced by
the theories of abbot Joachim. His postills on Genesis exist in a Venetian
manuscript. He died in 1297, cf. Fabricius, under Olivus.

* PL, 32, col. 1414, 1415. The work is pseudo-Augustinian, and Butler
has taken from it a sentence here and there. Here, as elsewhere, a reference
to the Patrologia enables us to measure the scribe's too frequent carelessness.

II] THE HUMAN INTELLECT IS INSUFFICIENT 405

apparet; et amplificat Augustinus dicens quod ubi parum est

quod apparet, tunc obscurum est ambiguo simil[e]. Diluces-

cente caelo quantum oculis satis est, iam omnium viarum deduc-

tio clara est; sed qua pergendum sit non obscuritate sed am-

biguitate dubitatur. Huius obscuri tria sunt genera: unum quod

sensui patet sed animo clausum est ; sic patet de vidente malum

pictum Punicum^ et non novit malum Punicum; anima tunc

talis, inquit Augustinus, nescit cuius rei pictura sit. Alterum

genus obscuri est ubi res animo pateret, nisi^ sensui clauderetur:

sicut est homo pictus^ in tenebris. Tertium genus obscuri est

quando res sensui absconditur, et si sensui nudaretur nihil

tamen animo eveniret; quod genus obscuri est obscurissimum ;

huius exemplum est, secundum Augustinum, quod cum im-

peritus de malo Punico malum Punicum in tenebris cogeretur

cognoscere. Consequenter Augustinus dicit duo fore genera

ambiguitatum ; primum est in his quae dicuntur, alterum est

in his quae scribuntur*, ut si quis cum audierit acies, sive legerit,

ignoraret utrum sit militum acies, an ferri, vel oculorum; si quis

vero legat scriptum, verbi gracia, leporem, dubitabit de penul-

tima an sit media correpta sive sillaba producenda^. Cum ergo

in scriptura ista concurrunt impedimenta, quantumcunque quis

legat in obscuris et ambiguis, prout exemplificat Augustinus,

in via non graditur cognitionis. Cum ergo populus sit difficilis

intellectus et scriptura sacra sit plena ambiguis seu obscuris,

immo, secundum Dionysium, sacris poeticis informationibus ;

quomodo, quaeso, foret eorum legere medium in via cognitionis

sententiae scripturae sacrae? Relinquitur ergo, quod vulgarem

populum in scriptura sacra legentem non est medium deducens

eos [sic] in notitiam eiusdem scripturae^, et propter hoc solum

consulitur in oppositum opinantibus, scilicet, ut propter maiorem

(f. 2026, 2) agendorum cognitionem promo verentur ad practicam

spiritualem memoriae actionis.

Confirmatur racio philosophice ; nam, secundum Philosophum,
pauci sunt vigentes acumine intellectus; et ideo ponit, tertio
Rhethoricae, quod quanto maior est populus tanto minor vel
remotior est intellectus. Ergo, Hcet politicum fuisset, quod
populus vulgaris, quando pauci de lingua fuerunt ad fidem con-

1 Malum Punicum = pomegranate.

* MS. patet, ubi. ' MS. vinctus. * MS. scribimur.

* Sic, but Augustine's sense requires an sit media syllaba corripienda sive
producenda — "whether the middle syllable should be pronounced short or
long."

® The sentence is ungrammatical, but the sense seems plain: "we are
therefore reduced to the conclusion that there is no means of bringing the
common people, who read in the holy scriptures, to the knowledge of those
same scriptures."

406 BUTLER'S DETERMINATION [APP.

versi, in quacunque natione fuissent, quod tunc sacram scrip-
turam legissent: non tamen sequitur quod modo in eadem
natione foret sic politicum ut omnes modo catechizati fide^
possent conformiter scripturam perlegere; et, si inveniatur quod
aliquis doctor^ approbatorum seu canonizatorum scripturas
sacras alicui populo transtulerit legendas, vel eis legere con-
sul[u]erit, non sequitur modo quod sic staret politicum; quia in
dubio unum est, quod dicit Philosophus, quod quanto maior est
populus tanto remotior est intellectus. Cum ergo optimum
medium ad cognoscendum Deum sit de Deo cogitare et ipsum
Deum suppliciter exorare, et plus proficiunt christiani per haec
duo media quam per lectionem sive per auditum, (ut in epistola
48, Ad Paulinanfi, de videndo Deo, docet limpidius Augusti-
nus) : mihi videtur quod consulere populum ad haec duo media,
(scilicet, cogitare et orare), foret consilium sanius quam con-
sulere quod scriptura vulgariter translata tradenda sit laicis.

Tertio, principaliter arguo contra praefatam assertionem ex
radice dispositionis hierarchiae angelicae creatae, in qua materia
sic procedam; primo, requiram quomodo acta sit in angelicae
hierarchiae dispositione ; quo habito, ex supposito communiter
dato a doctoribus quod perfectio, pro statu viae ecclesiae mili-
tantis, sumatur et attendi debeat penes conformitatem ad
ecclesiam triumphantem, concludam oppositum opinantis
praedictam saepius assertionem. Primo, qualiter fiat revelatio,
sive a suprema hierarchia sive a sibi subordinata hierarchia?
Conclusio est Augustini, quod semper fuit actu voluntatis
superioris revelato ad purgationem per actum huiusmodi
collustrandam. Nam disputat et tenet gloriosissimus Augus-
tinus, epistola 48, de \ddendo Deo, Ad Paulinam^, qualiter Deus
suprema hierarchia sit visibilis, qualiter invisibilis a creatura.
Si quaeris, inquit, si Deus a nobis videri possit, respondebo,
inquit Augustinus, quod ipse potest, quia in verissima scriptura
legitur, Beati mundo corde, qiwniam ipsi Deum videbtmt^. Et
si quaeris quomodo videtur a me Deus invisibilis, et inquit
Augustinus Deum esse invisibilem natura, voluntate tamen
visibilem, quia videtur ab altero quando vult et cui vult;
plurimis, inquit Augustinus, non qualis • sed quali specie illi
placuit ; ex qua sententia liquet Deum esse videndum a creatura
non natura sed sua voluntate. lam qualiter angeli sint visi-
biles est breviter disserendum, pro qua dicit Augustinus duo- ,
decimo Super Genesim ad litteram^, declarans quomodo occulta**

^ MS. chatezizati fide: apparently, "at an early stage of the faith."

* A veiled reference to Bede, whose translation of the scriptures was
quoted by the Lollards as a precedent. Cf. the Compendious Treatise, p. 441.

s PL, 33, col. 596 ff.

* PL, 33, col. 612, 613. ^ Matt. V. 8. « PL, 34, col. 473.

II] THE CELESTIAL AND TERRESTRIAL HIERARCHIES 407

miscetur spiritus malus cum spiritu hominis, et exemplificat de
uno a[d]reptitio qui, in quadam solemnitate paganorum, fanaticis
peractis sacrificiis agitatisque, saltando et ludendo, dixit coram
omnibus: In silva, inquit, iuxta nos posita hac nocte quidam a
leone perimetur, ad cuius cadaver spectandum tota haec turba
est confluxura, et locum huius solemnitatis totaliter desertura.
Quod et contigit; et consequenter subiungit Augustinus, quod
hoc est differentia inter visionemhominum et visionem spirituum,
quod spiritus, etsi nolimus, nos vident, nos autem, inquit Augus-
tinus, imagines existentes (f. 203, i) in eis nosse non possumus
nisi nobis ostendantur. Nam, ut aestimo, inquit Augustinus,
sic habent spiritus in potestate eorum occultare imagines in eis
existentes spiritualibus modis, sicut nos interiectis obstaculis
quibusdam nostra corpora, ne aliorum oculis videantur, ab-
scondimus ; haec Augustinus. Ex qua sententia satis claret quod
spiritus solum illuminat ex libera electione propriae voluntatis.
Ex istis arguitur,sic noto gratia argumenti, Raphaelum, angelum
ordinis inferioris qui debet illuminari de vero sibi obscuro^ per
Gabrielem, archangelum ordinis superioris; et arguitur sic: in
ista hierarchia ecclesiae triumphantis illuminatio passiva
Raphaelis totaliter dependit a voluntate Gabrielis in ordine
causali creato. Sed hierarchia ecclesiae militantis sequi debet
hierarchicam dispositionem ecclesiae triumphantis; ergo illu-
minatio passiva viantium de ordine inferior> dependere debet
complete a volitiva \aantium in ordine superiori. Sed constat
quod legere scripturam vulgariter translatam est actus superi-
oris, et non elicitur neque imperatur a voluntiva personae in-
ferioris ordinis. Ergo talis actus, qui est legere, repertus in
inferiori per sacramentum tantummodo purgato hierarchiae
celesti [sic] penitus est infernus.

Confirmatur quia ratio purgandi per sacramentum a labe
peccati originalis vel actualis mortahs contracti est magis neces-
sarium ad salutem quam talem purgatum sacram scripturam
cognoscere per lecturam: sed non contingit aliquem purgare se
per sacramenta, sed purgatur semper per personam distinctam,
baptizantem in sacramento baptismi, et tunc sic, quod personam
absolventem, qui actum purgandi reum^ pure voluntarie exercet,
conformiter tamen ad intentionem lcgislatoris3,...Ergo confor-
miter purgatus sed non illuminatus illuminari debet per opera-
tionem voluntariam personae illuminantis, qui ut sic est ordinis

1 MS. obscurum. The idea of illumination mediated through successive
orders of beings is taken from the pseudo-Dionysius' Dc Caelesti Hierarchia:
Raphael, says Butler, is lower in rank than the au-changel Gabriel. For
Raphael, see the book of Tobii. " MS. rerum.

' Stc, a line seems to be omitted.

408 BUTLER'S DETERMINATION [apP.

superioris; et ideo christianissimi principes et sanctissimi prae-
sules praedicatoribus quasi suis illuminatoribus, et ut sic eis
superioribus, honorem antiquitus exhibebant.

Confirmatur ratio sic secundo, et noto statum viae angelorum
ante confirmationem in beatudine, et quaero ab opinante
scripturam sacram vulgariter translatam debere tradi laicis ad
legendum: cur debet hoc fieri? Si dicat, prout puto talem dicere
velle, quod tunc inferiores possent quando vellent cognoscere
eis utilia ad salutem et inflammantia affectum ad religiosissi-
mam pietatem: et ego per idem noto unum latentem angelum
ordinis^ excitatum ad maiorem trinitatis deificae cognitionem et
continentem maiorem obiecti beatifici fruitionem, et quaero si
angeli superioris ordinis permittant angelos inferioris ordinis
speciales liabere libros, in quibus per spiritualem lecturam sive
specialem possent cognoscere talia inflammantia affectum, sine
revelatione aliqua ordinis superioris, vel non permittunt? Si
dicitur quod non sunt huiusmodi libri speciales, sed tantummodo
illuminantur per revelationem hierarchiae eis praelatorum : tunc,
cum Deus disposuit ad se parvum principium reducere in infima
per media, et iter ecclesiam militantem per triumphantem, cur
debet aliquis murmurare quod nostri intronizati pontifices non
(f. 203, 2) permittunt suis infimis lecturam sacrae scripturae, per
cognitionem inflammantium ad pietatem, cum hoc in celesti
hierarchia, ubi videtur esse conformis, nuUatenus sit repertum ?
Et rogo multitudinem celestis patriae ut tales lecturas non per-
mittant in ecclesia militante, quousque doceatur per aliquos
sufficienter, quod sic est in ecclesia triumphante; et ad sic
supphcandum auctoritate beati leronymi, qui ponitur in epis-
tola beati Augustini 59, et est Ad MarcelUnum et Anapsycham^,
moneo vehementer: Si, inquit leronymus, iuxta oratorem, silent
inter arma studia scripturarum, quae studia secundum lerony-
mum indigent librorum multitudine, silentio, hbrariorum seduli-
tate, securitate et otio dictantium. Cum ergo tanta vel maior sit
occupatio populi in agris colendis, in animahbus nutriendis,
servitiis impendendis, quanta sit occupatio miUtum in armis,
quomodo, quaeso, inter tot varia non nisi^ silerent studia scrip-
turarum? Videtur ergo bonum leronymo vulgari populo laicali
non committere studia scripturarum.

Quarto, arguo contra praefatam assertionem ex radice singu-

1 Sic, perhaps we should supply inferioris. Butler is still arguing from
the idea of mediated illumination, based on the De Caelesti Hierarchia.

2 S. Hieronymi opera, PL, 22, col. 1086. The scribe has evidently muti-
lated the quotation, which reads, in the PL: Quod si, iuxta inclytum ora-
torem, (Cicero, Pro Milone,) silent inter arma leges, quanto magis studia
scripturarum ?

3 Sic, something seems to have slipped out between non and nisi.

ll] THE MOSAIC LAW WAS GIVEN UNWRITTEN 409

laritatis collationis legis evangelii. Docet vero Chrisostomus,
Super Matthaeum, de opere imperfecto^, homelia prima, qualiter
mundi cordis non indigent auxilio litterarum, sed oportet vitam
praebere puram, ut gratia spiritus sancti pro libro fieret nostris
animabus; et consequenter deducit quod Noae et Abrahae et
iiliis suis, et lobo et Moysi non per litteras loquebatur, sed ipse
per seipsum, illorum inveniens mentem puram, et contra dans
animum; quare in his Deus Moysi legem dedit, notabiliter
scribit: Quoniam, inquit, in malitiae profundum populus in-
ciderat Hebraeorum, tunc itaque fieret quod litterae et tabulae
fierent; sed hoc, inquit, non factum Sanctis veteris testamenti,
neque his qui in novo ; sed cessante causa, cessat effectus. Cum
ergo rationabilitatis malitiarum refrenata [sic] fuit causa quare
Hebraeis fuit lex data in scripto, ut patet ex Chrisostomo, cum
populus christianus iam sit infrenatus laude divina, iuxta idem
scripturae : Infrenabo te laude mea^, rationabiliter cessare debet
effectus, scilicet, scriptura legis, et ad conformitatem novae
legislationis maxime congruum est offerre tabulas cordis; et
rationem consequenter addit Chrisostomus: Non, inquit, apos-
tolis dedit legem scriptam Deus: sed pro libris promittebat se
daturum esse gratiam spiritus sancti: Is omnium rememorahit
vobis^. Et Paulus inquit, hanc excellentiam demonstrans dice-
bat, non nos suscepisse legem in tabulis carnalibus^. Declarat
differentiam lationis novi et veteris testamenti, notans quomodo
lex vetus scripta fuit in tabulis, et quando et ubi; pro quibus
dicit quod vetus dabatur post Egyptiorum destructionem, in
eremo in monte Sina, in fumo et igne ascendente a monte,
buccina sonante, tonitruis et coruscationibus existentibus ; sed
in novo, inquit, testamento non sic, neque, inquit, in eremo,
neque in monte, neque in fumo, in tenebris nebulae et fulgore,
sed incipiente die, in domo omnibus considentibus, cum multa
mansuetudine omnia contingebant, quia, inquit, irrationabilibus
et effrenatis necesse erat indigentia fantasiae, solitudinis, montis,
buccinae, et aliorum, exaltationibus et persuasionibus, neque,
inquit, erat necessitas. Nam etsi ibi sonus factus est, hoc non
propter apostolos (f. 2036, i) sed propter praesentes ludaeos,
propter quos et linguae ignis visae sunt ; et horum dans rationem
subnectit : Sed, inquit, ludaei post ista visa dixerunt : Musto pleni
sunt isti^; multo magis si nee vidissent haec utique dixissent, et
post pauca obiecissent quod apostoli non ascendebant titulos

^ Pat. Graeco-Lat. lvii. col. 13, 14. For these homilies, cf. Fasciculus
Joannis Willis Clark dicatus, James. M. R., p. 85; and infra 416, n. 2.

* Isai. xlviii. 9. ' loh. xiv. 26. * 2 Cor. iii. 3.

* Act. ii. 15.

410 BUTLER'S DETERMINATION [app.

ferentibus^ in manibus sicut Moyses ; sed ipsum in mente ferentes
textum, ipsi sancti libri [viventes] et leges per gratiam effecti,
tria millia, quinque millia, immo orbis terrarum attraxerunt
populos, Deo loquente omnibus advenientibus per linguas
eorum. Ex quo pro processu satis liquet quod lex gratiae non
conferebatur in Christo legiferis ministris nee ab illis communi-
cabatur nisi advenientibus Unguis.

Concordat cum hoc quod Dei sapientia humanata, cum esset
ex tempore duodecim [annorum], reperitur in templo, in medio
doctorum, audiens et interrogans, sed tunc in lege utique legens,
docens per hoc ad Domini legem accedere volentes debere^ ad
medium doctorum accedere, et non omnium doctorum docen-
tium in templo; sed videte ad quales actus debent procedere,
quia tantummodo ad audiendum et interrogandum, secundum
Christi exemplum, quia hoc a Christo pro cursu aetatis nulla-
tenus est exemplificatum.

Patet ergo singularitas collationis evangelii, quia non dabatur
in scripto: ex quo sic arguo: sapientissimus legislator optime
cuncta secundum tempora disponebat, et notitiam legis^ gratiae
non nobis nominavit per scripturam sed tantummodo per
gratiam : ergo modus iste communicandi legem per prudentissi-
mum legislatorem est securus, immo securissimus, et tempori
gratiae congruentissimus. Sed modus lectionis est alius modus
a modo praefato : ergo ille modus in laicis non est admittendus,
ratione alicuius perfectionis. Sed ad oppositum opinantibus
ponitur iste modus ratione perfectionis cognitionis ; ergo, ex con-
sequenti, ratione alicuius perfectionis ; ergo cum iste modus non
sit modus traditus a legislatore perfectissimam legem tradente,
sequitur quod conclusio ad illam perfectionem est inutilis, sic
quod ad eandem perfectionem sine illo modo de communi lege
quis poterit devenire. Confirmatur per argumentum valentium :
Religio communis Christiana est perfectissima, quia a perfec-
tissimo legislatore cognoscente quod maxime est commodum
subdito, et maxime diligit subditum; et ideo, inquit, si privata
religio contra communem aliquid perfectionis apponeret, se-
queretur quod iste privatae religionis institutor foret latere legis
communis sapientior, vel in volendo subdito* commodum ei
foret magis effectus; quorum nullum est dandum. Per idem
arguo eis, modus quo populus participat fuit perf ectissimus :
ergo, per argumentum eorum, quilibet alius modus, qui non est
iste, est superfluus; sed modus iste quem tradit praefata assertio

^ Sic, a reference to Chrysostom's text shews that the scribe ought to have
written non descendebant tabulas ferentes. From the same source we have
added viventes to make the sense clearer. ^ jyjg debent. ^ MS. regis.

* Sic MS. : subditorum would seem to make the sense easier.

Il] THE BIBLE IS TOO SUBTLE 411

non est modus legislatoris : ergo quoad omnem rationem per-
fectionis significabilem superfluus et dimmittendus.

Quinto, arguo contra praefatam assertionem per subtilitatem
ipsius scripturae spiritualis artificii, et contra unum, quod ita
dicunt assertores praefati, qui, ut mihi relatum est, [dicunt] ne-
dum esse utile et conferens^ scripturam vulgariter translatam
a populo legi, immo quod utile foret et conferens, expositiones
sanctorum doctorum vulgariter transferri et a populo legi.
Potest confirmari haec ratio tamen secundum Gregorium^, 20
Moralium, dicentem quod sancta mater ecclesia sit cum Christo
una persona, et in scriptura sint multa quae intelligenda^ sunt (se-
cundum doctrinam Ticonii* in suis regulis) necessaria, (f. 2036, 2)
et maxime ad cognoscendum transitum a capite ad aliquod mem-
brum, et nisi foret transitus contingeret error; cum, per possibile,
sententiam priorem a capite, a quo fit transitus, [attribuat]^ ad
sententiam de membro ; et tunc crederetur secundum sententiam
de capite ab aequaliter sicut primam; tunc talis credulitas
tenderet in errorem, quia sic legens illam sententiam crederet
sic dictam esse de capite Christo, quando solum dicitur de
membro.

Item, aliqua sententia dicitur de corpore Christi vero ubi
convertitur sententia de corpore Christi mistico; legens ergo
utramque sententiam, putans verificari de corpore Christi uni-
formiter^ sumpto, prolabitur in errorem, sed legere expositiones
sanctorum praeservat a casibus huiusmodi sic legentem. Ergo
legere expositiones sanctorum erit omnino inutile'^. Sed contra
hoc arguitur per sententiam domini Altissiodorensis super
tertium Sententiarum, articulo tertio: Quod ingressi in taber-
naculum involverunt vasa tabernacuh, sicut portenda traderent
Coathicis, qui non viderent inquit nee tangerent vasa taber-
nacuh^: in signum quod simplicibus non licet perscrutari
archana Dei, quia tahs, inquit, perscrutator oppHmetur a gloria^.
Contigit vero videre Deum uno modo per fidem, et sic licet
cuihbet: alio modo per scrutinium, et hoc tantummodo Hcet
perfectis: sed non est magis^" scrutinium de Deo quam cognos-

^ Evidently in the sense of conveniens, similarly.

2 PL, 76, col. 251. This is really in Book 23, cap. i. 2, where Gregory
indulges in a wild flight of allegorical exposition. Butler is quite right in
arguing that an ordinary reader could find no such sense in the Bible.

' Sic, but the sense seems to require ititelligendo.

* See supra pp. 181, 265. ' MS. transitus ad ad sententiam.

* Ver if or miter} ' Sic, but we seem to need utile.

* A comment on Num. iv. 15. The Summa Aurea in quattuor libros
Sententiarum of William of Au.xerre was printed in Paris, 1495; see f. cxcvii
for his argument that the mysteries of the faith should not be explained to
the simple. ' Prov. xxv. 27.

" Sic, MS. : maius would make better sense.

412 butler's determination [APP.

cendo expositiones doctorum beatorum, in variis sensibus idem
veritatis lumen ostendentium. Ergo imperfectis de genere hoc
non licet, et ideo, inquit doctor, consequentiam significans,
dictum est quod quinque millia plebis percussa sunt, quia plebi,
inquit, non licet Deum videre per scrutinium.

Hoc idem ostendit Origenes Super Leviticum^ libro quarto,
parte quarta, tractans de veste sacerdotali, ubi notat quod alia
veste sacerdos utebatur in exitu ad populum, et alia dum esset
in ministerio sacrificiorum. Hoc, inquit, Paulus faciebat, scien-
tissimus pontificum et sacerdotum sapientissimus, qui cum esset
in coetu perfectorum, tanquam inter sancta sanctorum positus,
et stola perfectionis indutus, dicebat : Sapientiam loquimur inter
perfectos; sapientiam, inquit, non huius mundi neque [qualem]
quisque principum huius mundi cognovit ; . . . sed [tanquam] ad
populum exiens mutat stolam et alia induitur longe inferiori
quam ilia, et dicit: Nihil aliud iudicavi me scire inter vos nisi
Ihesum, et hunc crucifixum. Vides ergo, inquit Origenes, quo-
modo mutat stolam, quomodo aliis utpote perfectis praeparat
cibos, sed docens alios inferiores lacte potat ut parvulos, alios
oleribus nutrit ut infirmos. Et quod idem fecerit Christus
ostendit, dicens: Ipse autem pontificum pontifex Ihesus [audi
quomodo] primo hoc fecerit, et ista discipulis imitanda re-
liqu[er]it, nam evangelium refert de eo, quia in paraholis loque-
oatur ad turhas, et sine parabola non loquehatur eis, seorsum autem
solvebat ea discipulis. Vides ergo quomodo docuit ea ipse, aliis
indumentis uti debere pontificem cum procedit ad turbas, et aliis
cum perfectis et eruditis ministrat. Ex quibus patet Origenem
velle sentire quod ipsi sacri pontifices et sacerdotes carent com-
muni potestate communicandi scripturas ipsis, et hoc quocunque
modo; et cum putam [sic] illos in hierarchia ecclesiastica privi-
legiari, nee ex auctoritate aliquem^ posse ultra pontificem;
videtur tunc quod nulli liceat turbae communicare scripturam
sacram ab eis legendam.

Huic sententiae concordat venerabilis doctor de Lyra super
21 capitulo^ dicens quomodo in populo ludaeorum [sint] aliqui
maiores scripturas legis et prophetarum scientes, et aliqui iuni-
ores, scilicet, laici (f. 204, i) vulgares scientes tantum necessaria
ad salutem. Nam per omne sabbatum legebatur Moyses, scilicet,

^ Pat. Graeco-Lat. xii. 441. The text is here corrected from that source,
and omissions are marked.

^ MS. aliquis.

* Nicholas de Lyra, a Minorite of the convent of Lire in Normandy,
finished his commentary on the Bible in 1330, cf. Commentaria in universa
Biblia, Antwerp, 1634. The reference is apparently to Deut. xxxii. 7, id. i.
col. 1667.

II] THE PRACTICE OF THE JEWS 413

decalogus datus Moysi, prout dicit Paulus ad Hebraeos; sed
subtilitates scripturarum et dicta prophetarum praefati laici
ignorabant. In cuius, inquit, signum, Herodes sciscitabatur a
scribis de nativitate Christi, et non a populo, quia fuit secretum
prophetale. Haec Lyra. Cum ergo locus nativitatis pertine[a]t
ad articulum fidei de propinquo, et tamen hoc non debuit scire
populus, ex consequente nee alias circumstantias de aliis cre-
dendis sive fiendis. Sed^ nihil continetur in scriptura sacra nisi
substantia fidei, decern mandata decalogi, vel praedictorum
multiformes circumstantiae, ut patet ex passu superius declar-
ante quare quattuor sunt sensus scripturae: consequens est ut
ipsi laici scripturas cum doctorum expositionibus minime de-
beant legere, cuius tamen oppositum ponet opinio praelibata.

Amplius confirmatur. Nam ipsi Moysi legitur Deus dedisse
tabulas continentes mandata, et non dedit populo tabulas illas
legendas. Et scripturae faciunt mentionem quod sacerdotes
legerunt coram populo in libro legis distincte et aperte ad in-
telligendum: sed non asserit scriptura quod populus unquam
legerit in libro Moysi. Et tamen, per istos assertores et omnes
rectiloquos, sacra scriptura sufficiens est de utilibus ad salutem.
Tamen modum istum (sup[p]le, quod populus legat in aliquo
ydiomate vel translatione) scriptura non expressit. Miror quo-
modo predictum modum utilem voluit asserere, ex quo minime
colligitur ex scriptura.

Tertio, confirmatur ratio per Raby Moysen^, Directoris^
Neutrorum, libro secundo, capitulo xxix, ponentem quod
sapientes prohibent plana legis* populo ne pandarentur, quia
ilia plana vel inducunt mali quam pessimam cognitionem, vel
in errorem vel incredulitatem malam in veritatem creatoris, vel
in elationem omnimodam et negationem principatuum legis, et
subvertit. Necessarium est, inquit, cuilibet scienti aliud de his
quod non revelet populo, sicut exposuimus^; Sapientes dixerunt

^ data decalog expunctuated after sed.

* Maimonides: the great Jewish commentator who incorporated the
teaching of Aristotle into Hebrew philosophy, as S. Thomas Aquinas did
into Christian (cf. Maimonides, YeUin, D. and Abraham, I., London, 1903).
Maimonides' tract on the interpretation of difficult passages in scripture
(the equivalent of the many mediaeval Christian tracts, de duhiis scrip-
turarum, etc.) was Latinised as the Director Neittrori'.m, Doctor Perplexorum,
etc.; for an English translation, see Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed,
Friedlander, M., London, 1904, p. xxxi; and for the pas.sage quoted by
Butler, p. 211. ' MS. de duco.

* Playia legis: the literal sense of the Scriptures; Maimonides explains
that the Sages used figurative speech in explaining the Creation, and never
discussed it among the common people, lest the literal meaning of the words
should lead them to conceive corrupt ideas of God.

* In his commentary on the ]\iishnah.

414 BUTLER'S DETERMINATION [app.

a principio libri usque adhuc, quod gloria Domini est celare
verbum'^. Ex quo doctoris passu patet quod eadem est^ sententia
doctoris, Origenis, et Lyrae: quod non solum populo non est
intimandum de revelationibus originalibus^, de attributis, vel
de accidentibus eucharistiae, ut exemplificat assertor opinionis
contrariae; immo quod non est licitum intimare populo per
praedicationem multa plana legis; nam si scripturam haberent
quam legere scirent, tunc in disputationem legis de facili possent
prorumpere, quod summe prohibet ius civile.

Nam, ut patet in epistola Innocentis papae ad Senonensem et
Remensem archiepiscopos, et eorum suffraganeos, et ad Ber-
nardum abbatem de Clara valle*, (et est epistola 33 inter epistolas
beati Bernardi), scripserat quomodo Marcianus, laicus chris-
tianissimus, tamen imperator, tempore praedecessorum eiusdem
Innocentii, prohibuit ne clericus vel militaris cuiuscunque con-
ditionis de fide Christiana publice tractare tenetur^ in posterum.
Haec ille. Nam, secundum ius civile, si talis miles est, militia
privari debet; homo privatus et liber, ex urbe expellatur com-
petenti supplicio subdendus. Haec de summa trinitate et fide
catholica, cap. nenio^. Istis testimoniis non abest' ius canonicum
sed constanter ei occurrit, praebens osculum pacificae veritatis,
statuens quod laicus de fide disputans publice vel private ex-
communicandus : Extra, de haereticis, cap. quicunque [sic] libro
quinto^ Ex quibus omnibus testimoniis mihi videtur sequi, quod
propter subtilitatem (f. 204, 2) litteralis artificii ipsius sacrae
scripturae, et haec per doctorum plana testimonia, quod sacra
scriptura nee pro parte eius plana, nee pro parte eius obscura,
nee cum doctorum approbatorum expositionibus quomodolibet
a vulgari populo sit legenda.

Sexto et ultimo, in hac materia arguo contra saepedictam
assertionem ex radice coadunationis corporis Christi mistici.

^ Prov. XXV. 2. 2 MS. idem ex. 'Or possibly originibus.

* PL, 179, col. 516. This letter of Innocent II, dated 1140, to the arch-
bishops of Sens and Reims and Bernard of Clairvaux, deals with the con-
demnation of Abelard and Arnold of Brescia.

* Id. col. 516, conetur.

* Butler is apparently citing a passage from the Corpus luris Civilis
which is quoted in either the Decret. Greg, ix., the Sexti Decret., or the
Clement. Constit., the first book of each collection of which is headed De
summa trinitate et fide catholica. There is a chapter nemo in each of the two
first collections (see Friedberg, 11. 753, 954), but neither can be the one
cited ; nor could any of the many chapters nemo in the Decretum. The
scribe's references are often at fault. ' Sic: abhorret?

* This refers to the de haereticis, which is lib. v. tit. vii. Decreialiutn
Greg. IX: which does, c. xii., c. xiv., in particular, prohibit lay preaching
(of. Friedberg, 11. col. 784-9). No chapter begins quicunque: Butler pro-
bably cited the Cum ex iniuncto.

II] SUBORDINATION IN THE BODY OF CHRIST 415

Nam apostolus Paulus, ad Col. primo, vocat corpus Christi
ecclesiam militantem, dicens: Adimpleo ea quae desunt passionum
Christi, pro corpore Christi quod est ecclesia. Et ad Ephes. cap.
primo hoc idem dicit de Christo, quod Deus pater dedit ipsum
in caput supra omnem ecclesiam, quae est corpus Christi. Et ad
Cor. 12, enumeratis divisionibus gratiarum spiritus sancti, ita
dicit : Sicut unum corpus est et multa habet membra, omnia autem
membra, cum sint multa, unum corpus sunt in Christo; etenim,
inquit Paulus, in uno spiritu omnes baptizati sumus, unum corpus
sive ludei sive Gentiles, sive servi sive liberi^. Et fertur ibidem:
Si totum corpus oculus, ubi auditus? Si totum auditus, ubi odor-
atus? Nunc autem, inquit Paulus, posuit Deus membra sicut
voluit; quod si omnia membra essent unum, tunc corpus, inquit
Paulus, ubi est? Et idem Paulus ad Rom. 12 : Sicut in uno corpore
multa membra habemus, omnia autem membra non eundem actum
habent: ita multi unum corpus sumus in Christo, singuli autem
alter alterius membra^. Ex quibus testimoniis apostolicis irre-
fragabilibus patet omnes per baptismum Christi in ecclesiam
renatos cum distinctis actibus correspondentibus distinctis
membris concurrere per unionem spiritus Dei in unionem cor-
poris Christi mistici. Ex qua sententia catholica omnes fideles
renati sacramento baptismi sunt membra Christi. Nota tunc
membra Christi comparata manibus, dorso, thoraci, ventri et
intestinis, cruribus, pedibus, et articulis, et sic de ceteris, per A;
et nota omnia membra comparata oculis in eodem corpore per
B. Et arguitur sic : ista distincta membra significata per A. non
possunt in actum convenientem oculis [admitti] ; sed litteras
legere est actus appropriatus oculis : ergo secundum sententiam
apostoli non possunt^ competere membris significatis per A.
Sed totus populus christianus vulgaris est aggregatus ex mem-
bris significatis per A: ergo ex radice coadunationis corporis
Christi mistici, iuxta mentem apostoli, sequitur populum vul-
garem textum sacrae scripturae legere nullatenus sic debere.

Confirmatur quia, dato quod sic facto'*, argumentum apostoli :
Si totum corpus oculus, ubi odoratus, vel ubi pes?^ si pedes, quasi
populus, scire legem deberent, tunc pedes essent oculi, vel pedes
et oculi eundem actum haberent, contra apostolum, ex utraque
parte. Ergo et assertio est contra apostolum ; et supplico rever-
entiis vestris, et secundum regulam rationis de ista practica
iudicetis: an foret utile [et] conveniens librum ad legendum
porrigere pedi vel pedis articulo, vel non? Si decreveritis, quod

^ I Cor. xii. 12-13. ' Rom. xii. 4-5.

* Sic, the grammar would seem to require potest.

* Sic, perhaps the author himself wrote confirmatur itaque, dato quod sic
faciunt, argumentum, etc.

4l6 BUTLER'S DETERMINATION [app.

non, tamen sub zelo animarum hoc agere conentur praefati
articuli assertores : quaeso ut omnes articuli a tali incongruo iam
declinent^! Nam si iam unum pes vel articulus pedis legeret
sicut oculus, tunc corpus Christi misticum evacuaretur in sua
compositione ab ilia caritativa et paternali ac caelica harmonia
quae ei (f. 204b, i) inesse deberet, ut patet ex apostoli sententia
superius iam descripta.

Verumtamen qualiter haec membra corporis Christi mistici
debent nutriri docet Chrisostomus, Graecorum eximius, [inOpere]
imperfecto Super Mattheum^, homelia 31, notabiliter, per hunc
modum, notans quod presbiter cum venit^ in templum Dei, sicut,
dicit Chrisostomus, medicus ingrediens ad infirmum, statim de
stomacho interrogat, et eum componere festinat; quia, si stom-
achus sanus fuerit, est validum ipsum corpus. Ita, si sacer-
dotium integrum fuerit, ecclesia florescit; et, si corruptum est,
omnium fides marcida est. Et subnectit: Sicut, inquit, stoma-
chus recipiens cibum coquit eum in seipso et per totum corpus
dispergit, sic sacerdotes accipiant [sic] scientiam per scripturas
de Deo, et meditantes apud se toto populo subministrant. Et
sicut ministrante stomacho unumquodque membrum suscipit
nutrimentum et convertit secundum naturam membri, ut puta
quod suscipit iecur totum [sic] et sanguinem [sic]', sic, quae
ascendunt ad pulmonem, flemmata; quod suscipit fel, etficitur
bihs; quod in mammillis, efficitur totum lac; sic, inquit, sacer-
dotes in ecclesia verbum omnes suscipiunt, unusquisque tamen
convertit illud secundum proprium cor, ita ut idem verbum in
rectis cordibus procedat ad vitam, et in perversis cordibus sus-
citet ad iracundiam; in aliis operatur dilectionem dulcissimam,
scilicet, lac; in aliis flemmata, scilicet, odia nociva totaliter
expuenda. Et consequenter exponens hunc textum: Ex ore in-
fantium perfecisti laudem^, distinguitur [sic] inter pastum per
miraculum, et parata per scripturam. Ita docet ad propositum
pertinenter: lac, inquit, sine labore et opere dentium man-
ducatur, et manducantem sua suavitate delectat. Sic miraculum
nee laborem videntibus imponit, sed videntes admiratione de-
lectat et ad fidem nos molliter invitat; panis est perfectionis
doctrina et iustitiae, quam accipere non possunt nisi sensus

^ We should venture to translate thus: "If ye decide that this should net
be, yet that the champions of the aforesaid article [on scripture-reading]
attempt this in their zeal for souls, then I demand that all the toes should
now refuse so incongruous an office." It is possible, of course, that the
author meant to carry his metaphor all through, and that he intended
articuli assertores for champions of the toe.

2 Pat. Graeco-Lat. Lvii. col. 369 flf. ; apparently the quotation does not
however come from this work.

^ MS. plus quam iste. * Psal. viii. 3.

II] USELESSNESS OF THE LITERAL SENSE 417

excitati fuerint circa spiritualia; quoniam qui audit necesse
habet se tractantibus discutere et meditari, [et] de quibusdam
spiritualibus dentibus molere, unde et lex ruminantia animalia
munda vult esse. Et sicut, inquit Chrisostomus, si infanti
dederis fragmentum panis, quia angustos dentes habet, suffo-
catur amplius quam nutritur: sic homini [nondum] perfecto in
fide et puro sensibus si altiora misteria^ volueris dicere, eius
angusta fides magis scandalizatur quam aedificatur. Sed si viro
perfecto dederis lac, quod fauces eius delectat, membra tamen
non confortat; sic, si ei miracula ostendis, delectatur quidem
aspectu sed nee proficit ad edificationem aut notitiam veritatis;
haec Chrisostomus. Ex qua sententia patet quod sacerdotium
solum pro toto populo doctrinam hauriet, a quo sicut a stomacho
sunt nutrimentum (f. 2046, 2) accepturi.

Quia multi opinantur litteram sacri codicis posse reficere,
audiant sententiam Augustini Super lohannem^, homelia 9, de-
clarantis quomodo hoc fuit initium signorum, quod Christus in
nuptiis mutavit aquam in vinum: A prophetiae dispensatione,
inquit Augustinus, nulla tempora cessaverunt ; vinum, inquit,
in aqua quodammodo latet; sic, inquit Augustinus, si in pro-
phetia Christus non intelligitur, ipsa prophetia aqua erit. Lege,
inquit Augustinus, omnes libros propheticos non intellecto
Christo, quid tam insipidum fatuumque invenies? Sed intellige
Christum, et non solum sapit quod legis, sed etiam inebriat,
mutans mentem a corpore ut praeterita ohliviscens in ea quae ante
sunt extendaris^. Haec Augustinus. Quod autem eunuchus
Candacis reginae Ethiopum^ [in scriptura legebat] quo et
eunuchus, ut testatur leronimus, non fuit sanctior nee eo
studiosior^, ut patet in epistola 55, cum interrogaret [Philippus]
an intelligeret quae legerentur, respondit et quomodo, inquit,
possum nisi aliquis me doceret? et cum sic Augustinus: Prophetia
est quid insipidum, immo fatuum®, tunc pro cognomine habeat
nomen pincernae, cuius est bonum vinum diligere. Cernam
membra corporis Christi mistici iam inebriata in parte videtur
[sic] eadem membra aqua insipida, id est, populum christianum
pro quadam collatione spirituali reficere. Sed hoc facere nitun-

^ We have ventured to supply nondum, and to disregard a contraction
mark which the scribe has put over misteria, in the interests of what seems
the natural sense.

■^ PL, 35, col. 1459. ' Phil. iii. 13.

* Here, again, we have ventured to add three words to complete the
sense.

^ PL, 22, col. 544. Butler or the scribe has misquoted: S. Jerome said,
"Ego. . .nee sanctior sum hoc eunucho, nee studiosior."

* So far only Augustine, PL, 35, 1459; the rest of this diflScult sentence,
and that following, are Butler's.

D. W. B. 27

4l8 PALMER'S DETERMINATION [app.

tur, qui corticem litterae intellectui difficilem ad legendum
populo consulunt. Ego vero pedibus vel manibus ad legendum
libros offerre nolo, nee eis ad manducandum quibus non nutriun-
tur porrigo. Sed purgare stomachum corporis Christi mistici
exhortor in Domino, asserens cum Chrisostomo hoc esse poten-
tissimum medium, ut sub capite Christi eius corpus misticum
nullatenus infirmetur, sed in sanitate Dei perpetuo conservetur.
Ex quibus omnibus plane patet quod ego grosse senserim de
translatione scripturae in quaecunque vulgaria, contra affirma-
tionem eius simplici via occurrens. Quarum prima est ex allec-
tiva conditione sacrae scripturae, secunda est ex defectiva in-
tellectione humanae naturae, tertia est ex hierarchica dispo-
sitione angelicae creaturae, quarta ex singularitate collationis
legis evangelii, quinta ex subtilitate scripturae litteralis artificii,
sexta est ex conditione coadunativa concursionis membrorum
corporis Christi mistici. Haec sunt dicta cum omni reverentia
oppositum mihi opinantium vires cognitionis meae nimium exce-
dent[ium], absque inpactivorum verborum misera christianitate
[sic: garruHtate?].

Explicit determinatio fratris et magistri Willelmi Butler
ordinis minorum, regentis Oxoniae. Anno Domini mcccc° primo.

2. Palmer: De translatione sacrae scripturae in linguam
Anglicanam^. (f. 42 ft, col. 2)

1. Utrum^ sacra scriptura in linguam Anglicanam vel in
aliam barbaricam sit transferenda, et quod sic videtur, nam
licet illam praedicare et docere, igitur et scribere, et haec in
omni lingua eis nota, qui ad servandam illam et observandam
obligantur. Multi Anglici vel barbarici sunt huiusmodi. Igitur,
etc.

2. Sic: omnis lex rite vivendi aliquibus tradita, quae confert
vitam observatoribus et mortem transgressoribus, est in lingua
eis nota habenda. Sacra scriptura est huiusmodi. Igitur etc.
Scrutamini scripturas in quibus putatis vitam aeternam^.

1 Trin. Camb. 347, f. 42 b. The MS. is written in the same hand through-
out, and contains several Latin theological treatises, one of which is Wood-
ford's Contra Trialogum Wiclevi. On f. 546 occurs a note by the scribe:
Explicit tractatus de unitate et ordine ecdesiasticae potestatis, finitus per
manus Cornelii Oesterwic anno domini 1430 in universitate Oxoniae, ad
mandatum Fratris lohannis Courteys, sacrae theologiae professoris, ordinis
praedicatorum et conventus Exoniensis, tunc regentis universitatis prae-
dictae." A contemporary hand has inserted the title. Palmer, de trans-
latione, etc., on f. 42 b, and above f. 43, Palmer, de translatione sacrae
scripturae in linguam barbaricam. For the delivery of the determination,
see supra, p. 293 ; its probable possession by Sion abbey, cf. incipit and
Syon, 50. ^

2 The points defended by the Lollard doctor. Palmer's opponent, are
given first. ' loh. v. 39.

n] HIS OPPONENT'S POINTS 419

3. Sic : scriptura librorum inventa est in remedium oblivionis,
ad iuvandam memoriam, quia labilis est memoria hominis; sed
tradere sacram scripturam oblivioni, in qua tota lex rite vivendi
continetur veteris et novi testamenti, est maxime periculosum.
Igitur ilia in vulgari nostro propter labilitatem memoriae est
habenda, et sic in illam est transferenda.

4. Sic: nullus rite obligatur ad observandam legem aliquam
ignotam; sed utraque lex, nova et antiqua, est vulgo ignota
quousque in vulgari habeatur, quia vulgus nullam aliam in-
telligit nisi propriam et vulgarem. Igitur vulgus non obligatur
ad sacram scripturam observandam: ideo licet vulgo habere
illam translatam in linguam suam, quam solam intelligit.

5. Sic: iam habetur in Hebraico, Graeco, Latino, Chaldaico et
Gallico, et iam necessarium est Anglicam et barbaricam habere
illam sicut praedicti. (f. 43, i) Igitur aequaliter est habenda a
nobis in Anglico sicut et illis in vulgari suo.

6. Sic: dicitur quod Beda venerabilis totam scripturam trans-
tulit in linguam Anghcam, ne lingua sua barbarica videretur,
quod non fecisset nisi licuisset. Igitur, etc.

7. Sic: quilibet tenetur vitare peccatum mortale, quod non
potest nisi cogitando quale peccatum sit mortale, quod sciri non
potest a laicis nisi per doctrinam in lingua propria et vulgari,
cum nullam aliam intelligit [sic]. Igitur, etc.

8. Sic : non solum tenemur scire quae sunt fugienda sed etiam
quae timenda, quae credenda; quae sunt facienda, quae sunt
speranda, et alia sacramenta [qualiacunque?], omnia quae neces-
saria sunt ad salutem. Igitur licet tibi habere in scriptis, et haec
in vulgari tuo, quia nullam aliam linguam intelligis; igitur sic
curati tenentur praedicare et populum eis subiectum informare
de necessariis ad salutem, secundum illud Marci ultimo : Praedi-
cate evangelium omni creaturae^. Sed multi in tanto sunt muti,
et aliqui surdi, qui in scientia non possunt uti vocibus secundum
scripturas. Igitur licet propter tales habere totam sacram legem
in scriptis^.

9. Sic: quae habentur in vulgari et in lingua eis nota magis
movent ad devotionem, ad Deum laudandum et diligendum.
Igitur in tali lingua sunt habenda.

10. Sic: omne quod licet modo loqui licet modo scribere; sed
utramque legem licet mihi praedicando, disputando, defendendo
loqui: igitur licet earn scribere. Nihil valet earn scribere in
lingua ignota: igitur scribenda est in lingua eis nota, ut in vulgari
nostro.

11. Sic: posset contingere quod nullus Latinus esset inter

^ Marc. xvi. 13.

2 "The scribe now misnumbers by one, omitting nine

27 — 2

420 PALMER'S DETERMINATION [apP.

barbaros et Anglicos propter guerras vel inimicitias capitales,
et dato quod esset, et nullus eorum sciret linguam nostram, etiam
nee interpretari illam posse [sic] nobis, (sicut si unus Hebraeus
vel Graecus esset inter Latinos ignorans Latinam), nulli posset
interpretari in lingua nostra. Igitur nisi haberemus sacram
scripturam in vulgari nostro, non erit nobis via possibilis ad
sciendam illam, et tamen obligamur ad illam faciendam, quia
obligamur ad illam observandam. Igitur irremediabiliter
essemus astricti ad praecavendum [sic: praevaricandum?].

12. Sic: Quaecunque scripta sunt ad nostram doctrinam scripta
sunt^; sed modicum valet scriptura ad nostram doctrinam, nisi
fuerit scriptura in lingua quam intelligimus : sola talis est vulgare
nostrum. Igitur, etc. (f. 43, 2)

13. Sic: scriptura ignota non intellecta modicum valeret ad
nostram correctionem, sed: Quaecunque scripta sunt ad nostram
correctionem scripta sunt. Igitur cum tamen scriptura in vul-
gari nostro tradita est nobis utilis, et ad correctionem nostram
utilis, igitur scriptura sacra, cum sit nobis utilis et tam necessaria
in vulgari nostro, habenda est in scriptis.

14. Sic: Necesse est impleri omnia quae scripta sunt^, loh. 2,
igitur necesse est impleri omnia quae scripta sunt nobis in vul-
gari nostro in Anglico, quia haec sunt aliqua scripta, sicut ea
quae scribuntur in Latino, Graeco vel Hebraico ; et, si necesse est
omnia scripta in Anglico impleri, necessarium est omnia scripta
in Anglico esse.

15. Sic: Deut. 6, sic scribitur de lege^: Audi Israel, Dominus
Deus tuus [unus] est; diliges Dominum Deum tuum ex toto corde
tuo, scribe verba haec quae praecipio tibi hodie in corde tuo, nar-
rabis eafiliis tuis et meditaberis [s]edens in domo tua, ambulans in
itinere; scribes ea in limine et ostiis domus tuae. Igitur, eadem
ratione, in libris Anglicanis.

16. Sic: Deut. 31 ; Postquam Moyses scripsit verba legis huius
in volumine, decern mandata Dei, praecepit Levitis dicens,
Tollite librum istum et ponite in latere arcae foederis Domini, ut
sit ibi contra te in testimonium^. Igitur, conformiter, licet nobis
habere legem nostram in vulgari nostro; confirmatur, quia tam
necessarium est nobis Anglicis et aliis barbaris habere legem
nostram in vulgari nostro, sicut Hebraeis, Graecis, aut Latinis
in suo, ut eam sciamus et observemus, cum nullam aliam in-
telligimus, exceptis paucis litteratis.

17. Sic: secundum regulam rationis omnia intelligimus esse
concessa, quae expresse non sunt prohibita : sed non invenitur in
tota sacra scriptura prohibitum quod ipsa sic transferatur in

^ Rom. XV. 14. 2 Qj Lkc. xxi. 22. ^ Cf. Deut. vi. 5-9.

* Cf. Deut. xxxi. 25-7.

II] PALMER BEGINS HIS ATTACK 421

idioma barbaricum. Igitur propositum pro auctoritate notandum
est.

1. Ad oppositum, nulla vulgo inutilia sunt in vulgari nostro
habenda, quia nocerent plus quam prodessent; sed multa in
scriptura sunt huiusmodi. Hugo de Vienna^, Ecclesiastici tertio,
Inutilia non sunt investiganda neque habenda neque scribenda,
ut quare musca aut pulex tot habet pedes, (f. 436, i) et camelus
tantum quattuor et homo tantum duo. Item, reprohatio quidem
ftiit praecedentis mandati propter infirmitatem et inutilitatem ems ^,
sed quod est reprobatum non est in vulgari nostro habendum
vel scribendum, quia esset causa erroris. Igitur, etc.

2. Non omnis Veritas est scribenda in Anglico, quia multae
sunt inutiles: sed omnis Veritas continetur in sacra scriptura
secundum Lollardos, quia continet primam veritatem quae con-
tinet omnes alias veritates.

3. Sic multa sunt occultanda et non populo ostendenda, ne
nota et usitata vilescerent ; unde dicit Carnotensis^ Super primum
confitenti [sic\, quod si in lamina aurea mitrae supremi patris
pontificis scribebantur quattuor litterae* magni nominis Dei in
tetragrammaton^, ioth, heo, wach, hoth, sine^ apicibus, cum ne
notum esset vulgo magnum nomen Dei, quia sic per illud fre-
quenter et horribiliter iurassent, sicut non' faciunt christiani,

' Hugo de Sancto Charo, a Dominican and theologian of Paris, died 1263.
He wrote a postill, or short commentarj' on all the books of the Bible
according to the fourfold sense, literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical.
The quotation given, and that on p. 9, are printed in the 1502 edition of
Hugonis de Sancto Charo Postilla in tofam Btbliatn, pars in., Ecclesiastici,
iii. 24 : In supervacuis rebus, scilicet, in eis quorum scientia non est utilis, ut
quare musca vel pulex tot pedes habeat et camelus solum quattuor, et homo
tantum duos.

2 Heh. vii. 18.

3 Probably Ivo of Chartres, f 1116, author of the Panormia and the
Decretuni, in neither of which, however, can this passage be traced. It
might however occur in his (unpublished and inaccessible) comment on the
psalms, the word confitenti standing for the first word of the psalm. (See
Coll. Canoniques, Ives de Chartres, Fournier, 1897.) With less likelihood
" Carnotensis " might refer to John of Salisbury, author of the Policraticus.

* MS. esset vulgo magnum nomen Dei, quia sic per illud frequenter,
expunctuated.

» The sense is clear; many things must be kept secret from the people,
and hence the Jews had secret ways of writing the name Jahweh, the four
Hebrew letters of which (the tetragrammaton) the scribe attempts to
render (yodh, he, waw, he). Lyra's postill on the Bible, with which Butler
would have been acquainted (Antwerp, ed. 1634, i. 513, 516), has a note on
the tetragrammaton, explaining that the four letters were never vocalised
or pronounced. See Onomasiica Sacra, Lagarde, P., Gottingen, 1883; CE,
Jehovah.

• Nota, crossed out; apicibus, vowel points.

' MS. no; but the sense seems clearly to require nunc.

423 palmer's determination [app.

et multipliciter inhonorassent. Illi enim apices [diversitudine a
tergo pro et ex utraque parte per et si debite erat appositione^]
illis litteris significabunt, hia, hawe, hia, houe, quae dictiones in
Latino significant, " qui est, qui erat, et qui venturus est." Igitur
conformiter, cum multa de scriptura in honore sint habenda,
expedit ut a vulgo occultentur ne vilescant.

4. Sic : nulla habenda sunt in vulgari quae simplicibus essent
occasio et causa erroris, quia facilius potest vulgus duci in
errorem ; sed multa de scriptura in vulgari nostro translata male
intellecta ducerent simplices in errorem; nam si Arium, Sabel-
lium, Nestorium et Frontinum et alios haereticos difficultas
illius ducat in errorem, et a fortiori simplices in errorem ducet.

5. Sic: nulla sunt revelanda aliquibus qui non sunt talium
capaces ; sed multarum difficultatum sacrae scripturae non sunt
tales laici capaces. Igitur saltern talia in vulgari nostro non sunt
scribenda; ideo Ecclesiastici tertio: Plurima sunt supra sensum
hominum, scilicet, transcendunt intellectum et rationem, et
multos suppiantavit suspicio, scilicet, fidei fundamentum (f. 436, 2)
subripuit et a veritate deiecit in errorem: Altiora te ne quaesieris ,
et qui scrutator est maiestatis opprimetur a gloria ^.

6. Sic: ilia quae diminuunt meritum fidei simplicium non
sunt eis in vulgari tradenda; huiusmodi sunt multa in scriptura,
unde Ecclesiastici 3^ Multa ahscondita sunt a Domino tihi; ubi
Hugo in glossa reddit causam: Propter, inquit, meritum fidei*;
quia, secundum Gregorium, fides, inquit, non habet meritum
cum humana ratio praebet experimentum*. Item, tunc nocerent
clericis rudi[bu]s taliter si non aliter trad[er]entur.

7. Sic: stultum est soUicitum esse circa illud quod sine peri-
culo a simplicibus ignoratur; sed multa sacrae scripturae sine
periculo a simplicibus ignorantur, quia transcendunt ingenium
eorum. Non igitur oportet soUicite ilia scribere in vulgari.

8. Sic: multa per praeceptum Dei sunt occulta; non sunt in
vulgari scribenda, quia sic possent contra praeceptum chris-
tianum omnibus esse nota; sed multa misteria communicata sub-
tilioribus et sapientibus prohibentur scribi, ne nota fiant sim-
plicibus; unde Apoc. 10: Signa, scilicet, absconde quae locuta
suntseptem tonitrua, scilicet, misteria Dei, secundum glossam; et.
Noli ea scribere, scilicet, in publico denuntiare; cuius rationem

1 It is difficult otherwise to extend the scribe's frequent contractions in
this passage; yet it is still more difficult to make sense of it. Probably the
scribe has written pro et by a blunder for proui, and per et si for perinde ac si ;
possibly also debite for debitum. However, the general argument seems clear ;
as the ancient Jews never wrote God's name in full lest it should be dese-

rated, so we must shew equal economy with God's word.

2 Prov. XXV. 27. ' Cf. Ecclesiasticus xliii. 46.
In libros Moralium, see PL, 76, col. 1:398, fides.

II] THE SIMPLE SHOULD NOT READ THE BIBLE 423

ponit ibi Gorham^. Quia infidelibus, foetore malitiae agitatis,
blasphemiae plus quam aedificationis materia esset. Prov. 23 :
In auribus insipientium ne loquaris, quia despicient doctrinam
eloquii tut; et Daniel 12: Tu Daniel, claude sermones et signa
librum usque ad tempus.

9. Sic: aliquae sunt simplicibus nimis ardua et nimis diflficilia
et alta; non sunt simplicibus communicanda, nam Paulus dis-
cipulis scribit^: Tanquam parvulis in Christo vobis lac potum dedi,
non escam; nondum enim poteratis, sed nee nunc quidem polestis,
adhuc enim carnales estis; Cor. 3; Sed animalis homo non percepit
ea quae Dei sunt.

10. Sic: ilia quae simplices nollent observare, sed vellent
potius propter duritiam sectam christianam spernere, non sunt
admittenda neque scribenda in nostro vulgari ; unde Berengarius^
super illud Apoc: Et quae locuta sunt septem tonitrua, noli ea
scribere. In initio fidei, donee praedicatores sancti videntes in-
firmitatem gentium ad fidem venientium, non sunt ausi [eis]
austeriora Christi praecepta committere; ne forte (f. 44, i) duritia
praeceptorum territi, non auderent ad fidem Christi suscipiendam
accedere; et, ut videtur, sic fecerunt Apostoli, Actis 15: Placuit
Spiritui sancto et nobis nihil imponere vobis oneris, scilicet, con-
versis ad fidem de gentibus, nisi ut abstineatis vos ab imniolatione
simulacrorum et sanguine et suffocato et fornicatione. Igitur
duriora legis non sunt infirmis scribenda et revelanda.

11. Sic: secreta non sunt extraneo revelanda, Prov. 25 : Secre-
tum extraneo ne reveles; et Isaiah*, Secretum meum mihi, sed
tamen amicis meis; Vos nunc dixi amicos, quia quaecunque
audivi a patri meo nota feci vobis^. Igitur talia secreta non sunt
extraneis, simplicibus Deum ignorantibus, scribenda, quia ea
legere posset aequaliter inimicus sicut amicus.

12. Sic : ilia quae scripta non prodessent sed nocerent scribere
vulgo non deberent, quia essent contra Christi caritatem; sed
taha sunt multa. lob 9: Verebar omnia opera mea; antecedens
patet, de die mortis, de peccatis, de predestinatione et repro-
batione.

1 Nicholas Gorham, or Gorram, a Dominican at Oxford; died 1400; cf.
Pits, ed. 1619, p. 571. Gorham's In Apocalypsim S. Johannis was printed
Antwerp, 1620.

2 Cf. I Cor. ii. 14.

s Scribe: Bygaius. Berengarius of Tours, the opponent of the doctrine of
transubstantiation. His exposition on the Apocalypse was a favourite
mediaeval commentary, and is printed in the Benedictine edition of the
works of S. Ambrose, Paris, 1690, torn. 11. appendLx. The work is written
in seven visions, and the author's name is cryptically indicated in the
Admonitio Auctoris. The quotation given occurs in col. 542.

« Isaiah xxiv. 16. ^ loh. xv. 15.

424 palmer's determination [app.

13. Sic: caritas est, palam fieri nolle quod noceat agnoscenti;
sed multa in scriptura nocerent simplicibus, quia nocerent
hereticis valde intelligentibus. Igitur talia non sunt eisscribenda.

14. Sic : omnis transgressio novae legis est peccatum mortale,
pro cuius figurae transgressione mors debebatur in lege veteri;
sed Aaron et filii videntes quae erant in sanctuario involuta
morerentur, unde Num. 4: Cumque involverint involuta, et non
tangent vasa sanctuarii ne moriantur: nolite^ perdere populum
Caath de medio Levitarum, sed hoc facite eis ut vivant et non
moriantur, si tetigerint sancta sanctorum. A aron et filii eius intra-
bunt et disponent onera singulorum, et divident quid portare quis
deheat; alii nulla curiositate videant quae sunt in sanctuario prius-
quam involvantur , alioquin morientur. Haec fuit figura quod
nulli laici in nova lege deberent videre secreta et sancta involuta
in sanctuario sacrae scripturae, de quo sanctuario Psal. 72:
Aestimaham ut cognoscerem hoc, labor est ante me, donee intrem in
sanctuarium Dei et inteUigam in novissimis eorum; ubi glossa
interlinearis 2; Ordinantur enim qui ineffabilia (f . 44, 2) sacramenta
ignorant, et promoti in sacerdotii gradum, ut filii Aaron, scilicet
sacerdotes quibus omnia aperta et nuda videre concessum est,
unde bonis Sanctis Urri percussi sunt, qui viderunt archana
Domini, et 50, de plebe legis, sexto; et alia figura Deut. 22: Si
in terra vel in arbore nidum avis inveneris et matrem pullis desuper
incubantem, non tenebis eam cum pullis, sed abire patieris, ut bene
sit iibi et longo vivas tempore; quae figura secundum Gregorium
significat, quod sensus litteralis, qui est quasi magister aliorum
sensuum, dimitti debet, et pulli eius retineri, allegoriae et ana-
gogiae, quia littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat^. Quomodo,
igitur, simplices illiterati, vel sola grammatica instructi, illos
pullos trium sensuum ignorantes, non errarent habentes magis-
trum, scilicet litteralem sensum, tamen de pullis non curantes?

15. Sic Ezech. 47: Vir qui Habebat funiculum in manu sua
mensus est mille cubitos et transduxit me per aquam usque ad genua,
et iteriim mensus est mille, et transduxit me per aquam usque ad
renes, et mensus est mille, et veni ad torrentem quern non potui
transire, quoniam intumuerant aquae profundi torrentis, quia non
potest transvadari ; quem textum exponit Gregorius de sacra
scriptura, et in prologo ponit Moralium*: Di\dnus sermo sicut
misteriis exercet prudentes, sic [plerumque] ^ superficie simplices
refovet. Habet in publico unde parvulos nutriat, servat in
secreto unde mentes sublimium in admiratione suspendat ; quasi
quidam [quippe]^ fluvius est planus et altus, in quo agnus am-

^ Scribe, nolente. * That of Anselm of Laon, circa iioo.

' 2 Cor. Hi. 6. •» PL, 75, col. 515. * Supplied from PL.

n] THE BIBLE IS TOO MYSTERIOUS 425

bulet et elephas natet. Ex istis patet quod scriptura sacra in
aliqua sui parte est ita difficiJis quod comprehendi a viatoribus
perfecte non potest, quare non est communicanda simplicibus
in vulgari.

16. Sic: misteria fidei non sunt communicanda simplicibus
nee scribenda; patet Apoc.'^: Signa, scilicet, abscondita misteria
fidei, quae locuta sunt septem tonitrua, et noli ea scribere in pub-
licum 2, deveniant et in malitiam blasphemiae potius quam in
aedificationem convertantur, ut dicit Gorham^. Ideo Matth. 7,
Nolite sanctum dare canibus.

17. Sic: Paulus audivit archana verba, (f. 446, i) quae non licet
homini logui^, quae non erant alia quam divina misteria in sacra
scriptura contenta, quae continet omnia. Igitur non licet omnia
scribere.

18. Sic: causa putata quare ludaei interfecerint Christum
fuit quia docuit eos intelligere sacram scripturam spiritualiter,
quia littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat, et quando aliqui dis-
cipulorum abierunt retrorsum dixit^: Verba quae ego loquor
spiritus et vita sunt; spiritualiter intellecta vitam efficiunt
aeternam; unde pro causa mortis eius allegabant: Dixit quia
possum destruere templum corporis mei, loh. 20 et Matth. 26.
Quomodo igitur non errarent simplices, idiotae® circa scripturam,
si eam haberent in vulgari idiomate' modo, propter malum in-
tellectum Lollardorum et simplicium grammaticam^ solum in-
telligentes, [qui] Christi discipulos illam spiritualiter et [sic]
exponentes persequuntur? constat quod sic.

[Additional reasons for and against vernacular scriptures.]

Pro responsione in hac materia volo ponere alias veritates,
quarum prima est ilia: Sacra scriptura in omni idiomate et
lingua quoad aliquam eius partem est habenda; probatur, omne
necessarium omni homini ad salutem est in lingua sibi nota
habendum, ne tradat illud oblivioni quod tenetur scire et obser-
vare sub poena damnationis aeternae. Huiusmodi sunt multa in
sacra scriptura contenta; i Cor. 14: In ecclesia volo quinque verba
sensu meo loqui, ut alios instruam, quam [et] decern millia verb-
orum; ubi Gorham dicit ilia quinque verba esse quae sunt

1 Apoc. X. 3.

- Something seems to have been omitted before deveniant.

' See p. 423. * 2 Cor. xii. 4. * loh. vi. 64.

* The scribe has here expunctuated scripturam grammaticartim solum
intelligentes.

' MS. none.

* ]\IS. graminaticart'.tn.

426 PALMER'S DETERMINATION [app.

fugienda, videlicet^ septem peccata mortalia; quae sunt timenda,
videlicet, in[fernales poenae]^; quae sunt credenda, in simbolo
contenta; quae sunt facienda, decern mandata; et quae sunt
speranda, praemia aeterna^; omnia ista sunt necessaria ad
salutem. Igitur haec et consimilia in vulgari sunt habenda et
scribenda. Pro ilia veritate sunt multa archana, pro parte
afifirmativa conclusionis adducta.

Secundaveritas : non tota sacra scriptura est in omnem linguam
et linguagium transferenda; probatur hie per articula ad partem
negativam adducta; et iterum, sic. Sacra scriptura in multis
locis salvari non potest aliquando incongruitate et falsitate, nisi
per figuras et regulas grammaticales, (f. 446, 2) sicut ostensum est
in quodam tractatu quem vidi, in quo erant omnes figurae gram-
maticales, et declaratae et quotatae, ubi per eas sacra scriptura
in partibus suis sit ab errore servata et defensata. Igitur in
nullam linguam quae non regulatur regulis et figuris grammati-
calibus est ipsa transferenda. Probatur consequentia quia, si
in lingua illis figuris regulata [transf erretur] *, esset erronea nisi
illis figuris [salvis]* retineretur; igitur in aliam linguam quae illis
non regulatur translata esset erronea, quia non per illas ex-
cusaretur. Dicitur forte quia aliae linguae per regulas, pro-
prietates et figuras grammaticales regulantur: Contra, barbaris-
mus est vitium, quod constat in coniunctione litterarum, et
sillabae vel sillabarum [inductione]^ vel eorum accentibus, quo
vitio barbari maxime solent uti; sed dicit Catholicon^ de tropis,

^ MS. patet, by an obvious error.

2 The scribe has written only in, leaving a blank for the rest which he
apparently could not read.

3 Insimul here expunctuated. * Conjectural emendations.

^ A general mediaeval term for a Latin dictionary, first used by Jacobus
de Voragine, bishop of Genoa (Januensis), for his own work; see Catholicon
Anglicum, EETS, OS, 75, x. Voragine's work was successively re-edited and
enlarged, and printed by Locatellus at Venice in 1495, as the Catholicon
editum a fratre Johanne Januensi. Under Tropos this work gives: "figura
moralitatis: modus loquendi: ut cum aliquis loquitur metaphorice vel peri-
frastice; vel alio tali modo, secundum Hugutionem, et de hoc vide in quarta
parte ubi agitur de tropis." "Hugutio" is the title of a book frequently
found in mediaeval wills, and refers generally to the gloss on the Decretals
of Hugutio, bishop of Ferrara, who died in 12 12, but also occasionally to a
work on grammar, or dictionary, probably by the same Hugutio. (See
Fabricius, 11. 283.) Hugutio's Etymologicon (Ff. 5. 34, fifteenth century)
is arranged as a dictionary, and not divided into "parts"; the passage
quoted as from the Catholicon does not occur as a whole in it, but the
explanations given under the different terms appear to be the sources from
which the passage was composed : unless Hugutio wrote a separate work on
grammar, in four parts, where he collected under Trope the information
scattered in the Etymologicon. The latter under Tropus has "tropologia,
est enim excusatio vel sensus spiritalis vel moralis, et figurativa intelligentia
vel locutio."

II] IMPOSSIBILITY OF TRANSLATION 427

quod metaplasmus^ excusat barbarismum^, qui est vitium
dictionis, scema^ soloecismum *, qui est vitium orationis; et
tempus^ improprietatem sillabae excusans [sic]. Sed hae
figurae non inveniuntur in Anglico, nee in idiomate barbarico;
probatur quod alias figuras habent. Similiter circa medias
sillabas, ultimarum aliquas addendas, aliquas auferendas litteras
vel sillabas, ut patet in Catholicon; et pro maiori parte dictiones
Angliae sunt monosillabae, sicut ston, bon, non, don, gon, man,
that, math, rat. Igitur in istis monosiUabis non habent locum
tales figurae grammaticales, nee possunt orationes et proposi-
tiones ab incongruitate et falsitate per eas salvari.

2. Si proprietates unius linguae per regulas grammaticales
regulatae non possunt servari in lingua etiam eisdem regulis
regulata, a fortiori illae proprietates non possunt servari in
lingua barbarica non regulata illis regulis grammaticalibus ; sed
proprietates linguae Latinae, quae regulatur, ut constat, regulis
grammaticalibus, non possunt servari in Graeco linguagio, quod
est regulis grammaticalibus regulatum. Unde post prophetiam
Sibyllae, quam Isidorus in sermone De Natali subiungit^, haec de
nativitate, passione, resurrectione et secundo adventu eius dicta
sunt, ut si quis in Graeco capita eorum versuum dicere voluerit,
inveniet Ihesus Christus Yos theou sother'', quod in Latinum trans-
latis eisdem versibus apparet [ ]^ quod (f. 45, i) Graecarum

1 Ff. 5. 34, metaplasmus: formatio vel litterae vel in litteram, vel sillabae
vel in sillabam, et ut breviter eius signo aperiatur, metaplasmus dicitur
barbarismus, figura in aliquo rationabili de causa in metro vel in prosa facta.

2 Id. Barbarismus est in prosa et in sermone communi vitium ; in poemate
autem si fiat vel in aliquo metro aliqua rationabili de causa, figura erit et
dicetur metaplasmus.

' Id. Scema, imago vel figura, modus loquendi, scilicet, soloecismus,
figura, et fit scema proprie ornatus causa; metaplasmus vero causa necessi-
tatis fit vel ornatus in metro, tropus causa utriuscunque tam in metro quam
in prosa.

' MS. scolocismum. Id. Est soloecismus quoddam vitium vel quaedam
figura; si fit soloecismus in communi sermone, vitium est redarguendum.
Si vero fiat in dictamine, vel in poemate, factum in aliqua ratione, figura
est et toUerari potest, et vocatur tunc scema.

6 Id. Tempus :... dicitur etiam tempus accidens verbi, scilicet, modus

signandi.

« Not originally; perhaps found in some MS. of the De Nativitate Domini,
which appears in the early printed editions of Isidore's works, but is rejected
by Migne in the PL. The sermon deals with the nativity, passion, resurrection
and judgment of Christ; Isidore's other sermon, De Natali Domini, does
not (cf. S. Isidori Opera, Rome, 1797. i- 622: the sermon also appears as
cap. 6, lib. I, De origine officiorum). The verses of the Sibylline prophecy
however do not appear as part of the De Nativitate Domini in the printed
editions: cf. S. Isidori Opera, Cologne, 161 7, pp. 367-78-

' 'It7<toDs Xpio-ris wos diov ffwr-qp: the capitals (transposed by a blunder here)
form ix^vt. The scribe has written sothor.

8 The initials of the Latin translation would, naturally, form no such
acrostic.

428 palmer's determination [app.

litterarum proprietates potuit non adeo observari. Haec ille.
Quomodo igitur proprietates linguae possent in lingua Anglica
vel in lingua barbarica, quae regulis grammaticalibus minime
regulantur, observari, non video.

3. Sic: orationes, dictiones, propositiones, sillabae multae non
possunt plectro linguae formari, nee litteris Latinorum alpha-
bet! sillabicari, sed balbutiendo et de gutture evomendo, quasi
grunnitus porcorum vel rugitus leonum exprimendo^. Quomodo
igitur in lingua tali possent regulae grammaticales fieri et pro-
prietates observari non video. Litterae sufficientes deficiunt ad
exprimendum et sonandum Anglicum nostrum; in cuius argu-
mentum aliae litterae minime contentae in alphabeto Latinorum
sunt inventae ad exprimendum et servandum Anglicum nos-
trum : patet^ h^ ad ad [sic] exprimendum ha horo et consimilia,
et de pw ad expressionem talium : ^e, ^yth^, pnge, pr; et de Jjorn
ad expressionem talium : bero, Jyat, porwe, penne, et huiusmodi.

4. Sic: non solum deficit lingua Anglicana in litteris, sed
etiam in dictionibus, nam pro notissimis dictionibus et com-
munissimis in lingua Latina non sunt nomina neque dictiones in
Anglico correspondentes ; patet de istis transcendentibus, ens,
substantia, accidens; et etiam de predicamentis, quantitas,
qualitas, relatio, habitus; et positio, actio, passio, quando et ubi.
Sic de fallaciis, sicut de aequivocatione, amphibolia, quibus non
correspondent in Anglico dictiones, non obstante quod ilia
lingua plus aliis utitur monosillabis, sed vix per circumlocutionem
exprimi possunt in eadem.

5. Sic: si tota sacra scriptura sit in Anglicum vel in linguam
barbaricam transferenda, aut igitur de verbo ad verbum, aut de
sententia ad sententiam. Non primo modo, quia multae dic-
tiones Latinae non habent dictiones in Anglico correspondentes,
sed tamen per circumlocutiones expnmi possunt in vulgari
nostro ; cuius sunt legio, 666 [sic] ^ et lustrum, quod est spatium
5 annorum. Similiter multe partes scripturae salvari non possunt
ab incongruitate et falsitate nisi per figuras grammaticales quae
non habent locum in lingua Anglicana, et ostensum est igitur,
si translatio fieri debet de Latino in (f. 45, 2) Anglicum, non posset
in lingua ilia ab incongruitate et falsitate salvari. Nee translatio

^ Trevisa's Higden, a work nearly contemporary with this, complains of
the "gabbling, chattering, snarling, croaking and hissing" sounds, which
characterised some of the English dialects (ed. J. R. Lumby, 11. 157).

2 Apparently for videlicet, as later.

^ The Latin alphabet has h : but Palmer possibly here refers to it as being
aspirated in English (cf. the exclamations he quotes), and left unpronounced
in contemporary Latin, as in Italian. Probably Palmer actually spoke of w
and the scribe has confused the text: his examples as written might be
scribal errors for wat, wars.

* Sic: perhaps ^e^yth. * From Lyra, Antwerp, 1634, '^- 53^-

II] EVEN THE LITERAL SENSE IS UNTRANSLATABLE 429

debet fieri de sententia ad sententiam, quia sententia eiusdem
litterae Latinae est apud di versos diversa ; in quern igitur sensum
transferri debet ignoratur. Dicit forte quis, quod habeat sensum
litteralem, moralem, allegoricum et anagogicum: transferri tan-
tum debet quoad sensum litteralem. Contra, sensus litterales
sunt diversi secundum opinionem diversorum, et stat argumen-
tum sicut prius.

6. Sic 70 interpretes nunquam nisi ieiuniis et orationibus
peractis transferrent, et tamen, (dicit leronimus,) frequenter
erraverunt, sicut leronimus hoc idem de seipso confitetur; quo-
modo igitur generaliter simplices solam grammaticam et vix eam
intelligentes in transferendo non errarent?

Tertia Veritas: sacra scriptura non debet omni publicari
quoad omnia, nee ab omnibus occultari quoad aliqua. Pro-
batur, nam Beda dicit misteria fidei christianae non populo
pandenda sunt, ne vilescant; nee probis claudenda, ne in totum
lateant. Quae item angelus praecepit lohanni, Apoc. 14^: Quod
vides in libro scribe, sed quae locuta sunt septem tonitrua, noli ea
scribere. Igitur aliquibus est scribenda, aliquibus non publi-
canda, secundum diversitatem partium. Similiter Paulus, 2 Cor.
12, audivit archana quae non licet homini loqui. Igitur nee
scribere ea licet.

Quarta Veritas : sacra scriptura non est malis totaliter communi-
canda voce vel scriptura; probatur Matt. 7, Nolite sanctum dare
canibus, et Gorham super illud Apoc. 10, Noli scribere quae locuta
sunt septem tonitrua: quia infidelibus, inquit, furore malitiae
agitatis blasphemiae potius quam edificationis materia esset;
unde Prov. 23, In auribus insipientium ne loquaris, quia despicient
doctrinam eloquii.

Quinta Veritas: licet ipsa sit revelanda, tamen aliquando ad
tempus est occultanda: probatur Daniel 12: Tu Daniel, claude
sermones et signa librum usque ad tempus, pertransibunt piurimi
et multiplex erit scientia.

Sexta Veritas: aperienda est amicis Dei et claudenda inimicis;
probatur per glossam Apoc. 14: Noli ea scribere, inquit, ut amicis
pateant et inimicis lateant; et in evangelio^: (f. 456, i) Vos autem
dixi amicos meos, quodcunque audivi a patre meo nota feci vobis.

Septima Veritas: secreta Dei celanda sunt a simplicibus et non
omnibus manifestanda; probatur Isaiah 24, Secretum meum
mihi, et secretum meum ne extranco reveles, Prov. 25, est gloria
Dei celare verbiim. [Id.]

Octava Veritas: magis diflficillima ad intelligendum ct quae cx-
cedunt intellectum simplicium non est scripturae demandanda

1 Apoc. X. 3. * loh. XV. 15.

430 PALMER'S DETERMINATION " [app.

eis^, ne in errorem inducantur; probatur, quia: Altiora te ne
quaesieris^, quae, scilicet, transcendunt intelligentiae tuae
rationem; quia Prov. 25: Qui scrutator maiestatis opprimetur a
gloria. Sicut maxima claritas obtendit^ visum, sic nimia per-
scrutatio secretorum Dei obtendit^intellectum, et ideo non plus
saepe quam oportet, secundum Apostolum: Quia bestia quae
tetigit montem lapidabitur*. Bestia est intellectus humanus
simplicium, et mons simplicitas scripturarum, et plura sunt
superiora sensus [sic] hominum et transcendunt rationem et in-
tellectum, et sequitur, multa abscondita tibi sunt a Domino.

Nona Veritas: multa sunt abscondita a simplicibus et eis non
revelanda propter meritum fidei augendum; probatur per
Gregorium, quia fides non habet meritum ubi humana ratio
praebet experimentum; et Hugo de Vienna super illud Ecclesi-
astici 3^, Multa sunt abscondita tibi a Domino, in glossa, Propter,
inquit, meritum fidei.

Decima Veritas: nimis ardua ad observanda non erunt simpli-
cibus tradenda; probatur, nam Paulus propter eandem causam
scribit discipulis: Tanquam parvulis in Christo lac potum vobis
dedi, non escam: nondum enim potestatis sicut nee nunc quidem
potestis, adhunc enim carnales estis; patet i Cor. 3. Similiter
Berengarius super illud ^^oc. 10 : Quae locuta sunt septem tonitrua,
noli ea scribere: In initio, inquit, fidei, predicatores sancti viden-
tes infirmitatem gentium ad fidem venientium non fuerunt ausi
exteriora praecepta committere, ne forte duritia praeceptorum
territi non auderent ad fidem christianam sustinendam accedere;
sic enim fecerunt apostoli. Actus 17^, ubi sic: Spiritui sancto et
(f. 45 &, 2) nobis nihil imponere vobis oneris, nisi ut abstineatis vos
ab immolatis et sanguine suffocato et a fornicatione, dixerunt
apostoli conversis de gentibus ad fidem.

Undecima Veritas: vana simplicibus et inutilia non sunt eis
manifestanda, pro illo Ecclesiastici 3: In vacuis rebus noli
scrutari, et in multis operibus eius non eris curiosus ; ubi Hugo de
Vienna in postilla': In rebus vacuis, id est, in eis quorum
scientia non est utilis, ut quare musca vel pulex tot pedes
habent et camelus tantum quattuor et homo solum duo.

Duodecima Veritas: laicis utilia ad salutem et non alia de
sacra scriptura sunt eis tradenda; probatur: Altiora te ne quae-
sieris, et fortiora te ne scrutatus fueris^; sed quae praecipit tibi

^ Sic, the scribe seems to have transposed scripturae from after difficillima,
and to have changed sunt into est.
^ Ecclesiastici iii. 22.

* Sic, by an obvious blunder for obtundere, to dull or stupefy,

* Heb. xii. 20. « Ecclesiastici xliii. 36.

« Act. XV. 28. ' See supra 421. ' « Ecclesiastici iii_ 22.

II] THE LOLLARD'S REJOINDER 431

Deus, ilia cogita semper, et in pliirihus operihus eius non sis

curiosus Haec^ sunt praecepta et caerimonia atque indicia, quae

mandavit Dominus Deus vester: Audi Israel, et observa quae
praecepit Dominus Deus tuus: diliges Dominum Deum tuum ex
toto corde tuo, et ex tola anima tua, er unique verba haec quae ego
praecipio tibi hodie in corde tuo, et narrabis ea filiis tuis, et
meditaberis sedens in domo tua et ambulans in itinere, dormiens
atque consurgens, et ligabis quasi signum in manu tua; eruntque
et movebuntur inter oculos tuos; scribesque ea in limine et ostiis
domus tuae. Ecce quot scribenda erunt praecepta in populo.
Vana et inutilia sunt vitanda: De^ his volo te confirmare, ut
curent in bonis operibus qui credunt Deo. Haec sunt bona et utilia
homini: stultas autem quaestiones et genealogias et contentiones et
pugnas legis devita: talis sunt vobis inutiles et inanes.

Tertia decima Veritas : Aliqua pars scripturae sacrae in mente
non potest extra exprimi, scripta vel voce; probatur quia sicut
iubilus mentis potest esse tantus quod propter illius vehementiam
extra ostendi non poterit, sic est aliqua pars scripturae in mente
tam divina, tarn iocunda, quod extra in voce vel scriptura non
potest plene et perfecte aperiri: quia nee oculus vidit nee auris
audivit (f. 46, i) nee in cor hominis ascendit quae praeparavit Deus
diligentibus se^; et ad Cor. 2.

Pro-vernacular-Bible rejoinder.

Sed ilia Veritas non est ad propositum, quia hie loquimur de
scriptura sacra nobis tradita in canone Bibliae.

1. Contra tamen praedictam veritatem, ut magis appareat
articulus, sic : Qtii deliqnerit in uno /actus est omnium reus, se-
cundum lacobum: Sed facilius potest aliquis delinquere contra
legem antiquam et etiam novam, nisi habeantur in scriptis, cum
labilis sit memoria hominis. Igitur, etc.

2. Sic secretissima Dei et difficiUima sunt nobis a Domino
tradita, ut articulus Trinitatis, quod una res et una essentia sunt
tres personae realiter dictae a qualibet earum, quo articulo nullus
est difficilior vel secretior, igitur difficultas vel secretum non
rinpedit.

3. Sic: I oh. 6, Ego sum panis vivus qui de caelo descendi, si
quis manducaverit ex hoc pane vivet in aeternum, et panis quern
ego dabo, caro mea est pro mundi vita. Litigabant igitur ludaei ad
invicem dicentes; quomodo potest hie dare carnem suam ad mandu-
candum? durus est hie sermo, quis potest cum audire? Ex hoc
multi discipuli abierunt retrorsum, et iam cum illo non ambulabant ;
et loh. 2*, Ex nobis prodierunt, sed ex nobis non erant, nam si
fuissent ex nobis permansissent. DifficiUima et secretissima eis
1 Deut. vi. 5-9. * Tit. iii. 8-9; cf. ii. 9. ' i Cor. ii. 9, * r lofi. ii. 19.

432 PALMER'S DETERMINATION [app.

docuit, non obstante quod capere non voluerunt, sed ex eo
recesserunt.

4. Sic: Matt. 19: Dicunt ei discipuli, si ita est, non expedit
nubere; qui dixit eis: non omnes capiunt verbum illud, sed quibus
datum est; sunt enim eunuchi qui semetipsos castraverunt propter
regnum Dei; qui potest, capiat.

5. Sic : I oh. 6^ : Adhuc habeo vobis multa dicer e, sed non potestis
portare modo; cum autem venerit ille spiritus veritatis, docebit vos
omnem veritatem: igitur docebit omnem veritatem, et secretissi-
mam et difficillimam. Haec contra octavam et nonam veritatem.

Et [item similiter?] : Si fides non habet meritum ubi humana
ratio praebet experimentum, tunc [non] expediret doctoribus
studere ad fidem defendendam ratione, sicut etiam quod melius
docti in fide essent minoris meriti.

Similiter Christus sublimia praedicavit in divinis, aequalem se
faciens Deo, I oh. 5, propter quod ludaei quaerebant eum inter-
ficere, sicut ibidem dicitur loh. 8 : dixit eis, ego principium (f . 46, 2)
qui loquor vobis, et antequam Abraham fieret [sic'], ego sum; propter
quod, ut ibi dicitur, tulerunt lapides ut iacerent in Ihesum.
Igitur sanctum videtur dedisse canibus.

Similiter margaritas videtur posuisse ante porcos conculcandas
[quando] Deum se figuratum esse per manna dicebat: Ego sum
panis vivus qui de caelis descendi; non sicut patres vestri mandu-
caverunt manna in deserto et mortui sunt: qui manducat hunc panem
vivet in aeternum. Quam margaritam multi conculcaverunt ; dicitur
ibi, durus est hie sermo, quis potest eum audire? et abierunt retrorsum.

Item, ex hoc quod dedit lude proditori, qui et canis et porcus
fuit, eukaristiam, qua nihil sanctius est in sacramentis. Ex hoc
quod ipse alibi videtur ^ contrarium docuisse, ut Matt. 14, Quod
dico vobis in tenebris, dicite in [hoc.^] lumine, et quod in auribus
dicite in cubiculis, praedicate in tectis^.

Item ex hoc loco: Nolite sanctum dare canibus, Matt. 7, videtur
[quod] non deberem dare eukaristiam subdito meo quando scio
eum esse vel canem per infidelitatem vel porcum per spurcitiam
peccatorum ; nam si dedero, faciam contra doctrinam Christi ; et,
si non dedero, faciendo iniuriam. Requiritur in casu isto utrum
possim ei dare hostiam non consecratam loco consecratae? quod
sic videtur, quia sic incedam in misericordiae via et vitabo
ambo praedictas inconvenientias, quia nee dabo sanctum canibus
neque perdam peccatorem*.

^ loh. xvi. 12. ^ dixisse crossed out.

^ This is a cento of Matt. x. 27 and Luke xii. 3. Author and scribe between
them have produced a result which admirably exemplifies the frequent
careless use of the biblical text in the middle ages.

* The argument in this paragraph is satirical. Knowing that a refusal of
the consecrated host on such grounds is inadmissible, the advocate of ver-

II] palmer's rejoinder 433

Item, nullo sapiente homine actore fit homo deterior, non enim
ilia parva culpa vel tanta est ut insipientem hominem cadere
nequeant [sic], ut dicitur; sed si dedero ei, fit me actore multo
deterior quam fuit ante; patet ex Cor. ii: nullo igitur modo, si
sim sapiens, debeo ei dare hostiam sanctam, nee debeo ipsum
prodere. Relinquitur ilia "via misericordiae," sicut dictum est.

Anti-vernacular-Bible rejoinder.

Responsio. Dicendum quod nichil invenitur in factis vel in
dictis quod repugnet [ ] : intellectae : Nolite sanctum dare

canihus; dicit enim Augustinus, libro secundo De sermone Domini
in monte, nota ibi ; unde debet non sanctum dare canibus ; neque
margaritas posuit ante porcos per se, (f. 466, i) sed propter alios
solum, quia non propter eos sed propter alios dixit ^. Ad aliud quod
obicitur de eukaristia data ludae: adhuc occultum erat discipulis,
propter quod et ei dedit etiam eukaristiam, ut dispensaturos
futuros huius sacramenti doceret quod propter occultum pecca-
tum non repellerent subditos suos, publice cum aliis hoc sacra-
mentum quaerentes ; et hoc propter tres rationes. Prima, ne talis
proderetur; secunda, ne scandalum generetur in cordibus aliorum
videntium; tertia, ne tales dispensatores haberent libertatem
contra bonos malignandi, repellendo eos a communione et in-
famando eos. Cum igitur dicitur: Nolite sanctum dare canibus,
de illis quorum crimina sunt manifesta et notoria intelligendum
dico, si ad eukaristiam trahantur; vel, si de aliis, quorum crimina
sunt occulta, contendat aliquis hoc debere intelligi, prohibetur
non actus dandi, similiter ac^ in omni causa, sed voluntas; debet
enim sacerdos peccatorem occultum primo monere si potest, ut
poenitentiam agat, et ad sacramentum accedat ; quod si noluerit,
debet ei occulte prohibere ne communicantibus publice se immis-
ceat ; quod si se immiscuerit, debet dare ei hostiam consecratam
voluntate lugubri et nolente, ut dictum est.

Ad aliud, ut dictum est: Praedicate super tecta; respondet
Chrisostomus, homeha 23^, Operis imperfecti: quod non praecepit
Christus omnibus omnia dicere, quia sic contrarium huic loco
praecepisset, sed praecepit quibus oportuit cum libera pro-
palatione, et in aperto dicere et non in angulo, neque in tcnebris,
sicut dicunt doctrinae suspectae, quemadmodum Christus ob-
servavit loh. 18: Ego palam locutus sum mundo.

Ad aliud quod obicitur de eukaristia: patet quod non debet

nacular Bibles tries to shew that his opponent's use of the text: Nolite
sanctum dare canibus, would as rationally entail it, as it would cover the
denial of a translation of the Bible to the ignorant.

^ PL, 34, col. 1301, "non putandus est [Christus] sanctum dedisse
canibus," etc. 2 mS. &-.

' Pat. Graeco-Lat. lvii. col. 399.

D. w. B. 28

434 PALMER'S DETERMINATION [app.

dari occulto peccatori cum aliis se ingerenti hostia non conse-
crata propter duas rationes; primo, quia veritati nulla fictio
adiungenda est, quia nulla conventio lucis ad tenebras, 2 Cor. 6;
at per hoc probat Augustinus [in] sermone^, quod corpus Christi
non fuit factum fantasticum, quia Veritas Christus fallere non
potuit. loh. 13: Nunquam indiget Deus vestro mendacio ut
pro illo loquamini dolos, et ideo in sacramentis ecclesiae quae
sunt sacramenta veritatis, nihil agendum est per fictionem, prae-
cipue in sacramento eukaristiae, in quo Christus (f. 466, 2), totus
continetur; manifesta enim esset fictio si hostia non consecrata
daretur loco consecratae. Secundo, quia sacerdos hoc faciens,
quantum in se est, fieret populo circumstanti occasio idolatriae,
qui populus licet peccatum idolatriae non incurreret, aestimans
probabiliter hostiam esse consecratam, tamen sacerdos, ex hoc
quod ipse^ hostiam non consecratam populo exhiberet adoran-
dum, crimen idolatriae incurreret; unde manifestum est quod
in nulla causa faciendum est quod hostia non consecrata ex-
hibeatur alicui tanquam consecrata. Ex istis patet quod ilia via
misericordiae non est elicienda^ sed abicienda, quia in extremo
consistit Veritas in proposito.

Ad aliud scilicet, quod nuUo sapiente [sic] fit homo deterior,
dicitur quod me actore non fit ille deterior, qui me invito accipit
sacramentum, sed seipso per se, et non ego nisi per actus [eius]
et coactus.

Ad aliud scilicet, "fides non habet meritum verum": sed, si
nollent credere nisi haberent rationem pro se; et ad aliud: "qui
deliquerit in uno f actus est reus omnium"; quia si[c] omnia
[peccata] remissa per ingratitudinem [irrita] reddunt.

Further answers to the principal arguments of those
WHO desire translations.

Ad primum principale, cum sic arguitur: Licet totam sacram
scripturam praedicare et docere, igitur et scribere, hie dico:
Primo, negando consequentiam, quia dictum est in lohannis
Apoc. 10 : Quae locuta sunt septem toniirtia, noli ea scribere ; vidit
tamen, audiit et intellexit ea. Secundo nego, asserens quia
Matt. 7 dicitur: Noli sanctum dare canibus, neque margaritas
ponere ante porcos. Similiter, Paulus audivit archana verba, quae
non licet homini loqui, videlicet, praedestinationem beatorum
et reprobationem malorum, nee sibi nee homini licet hoc loqui
propter praesumptionem et desperationem damnatorum. Tertio
dico, quod licet transferri eam liceat, non tamen in omnem lin-

1 The scribe's number is doubtful; the sermon is ccxxxiii in PL, 39,
col. 2175.

2 MS. ex hoc ipse quidem. ' Sic, eligenda?

IlJ THE PRECEDENT OF BEDE'S WORK 435

guam, quia non [in] barbaricam, ut arguendo ad aliam partem
ostensum est. Quarto dico, non omnis obligatur ad observan-
tiam omnium in ea contentorum, sed tantum ad praecepta, ut
ibi ostensum est.

Ad secundum principale dico, quod lex rite vivendi quoad
praecepta, et quoad alia quae conferunt vitam, et quoad ilia
[quae] necessarie requiruntur^, est habenda, non tamen quoad
alia dijOficillima et obscura. Secundo dico quod in scripturis
aliqua inveniuntur in quibus putamus vitam aeternam habere,
et praeter ilia sunt multa alia ad quae laici minime obligantur
scire vel agere.

Ad tertium (f. 47, i) dico concedendo quod labilis est memoria
hominum, et ideo in omni natione scriptura est habenda in tali
lingua in qua potest transferri, ut in lingua Hebraica, Graeca et
Latina, et ideo in omni natione requiritur quod sint clerici in
aliqua lingua tali periti, qui possunt populo per circumlocu-
tionem scripturas interpretari.

Ad quartum dico, quod licet vulgo per clericos interpretantes
habere notitiam scripturae sacrae et habere omnia praecepta eis
necessaria, requisita ad salutem ; non tamen est eis necessarium
ad salutem habere alia difficillima et obscura et ad salutem im-
pertinentia. Secundo dico, si in eis omnia scire esset necessarium
ad salutem, esset eis necessarium ad salutem linguam talem
addiscere in qua licet eam transferre.

Ad quintum nego consequentiam, quia in linguam Hebraicam,
Graecam et Latinam ipsa potest transferri, non tamen sic potest
in omnem linguam, quia alphabet© Latinorum non utuntur
neque Graecorum neque Hebraicorum, et licet uterentur illo non
tamen expediret neque deberet omnia in ilia transferri, propter
quaedam ante dicta.

Ad sextum, licet Beda transtul[er]it totam sacram scripturam,
tamen illius translationem ecclesia non accipit, quia forte erravit,
sicut leronymus et alii fere omnes qui eam transferre praesump-
serunt. Secundo dico, quod Beda non transtulit eam nisi quoad
necessaria ad salutem et quoad facilia, quia secundum se totam ^
non potuit transferri in linguam barbaricam, ut in secunda veri-
tate est ostensum.

Ad septimum dico, quod ahquis potest vitare peccatum mor-
tale, licet non cognoscat illud esse peccatum mortale, per inchna-
tionem ad obiectum, unde habitus fidei non solum inclinat ad
assensum ad articulum, sed impedit assensum ad haeresim
oppositam, licet ignoretur an sit haeresis. Similiter auctor De
fide et legibus: nota : Sufficit alicui pro sententia ipso ignorante se

^ MS. quoad ilia nc'co requiratur.

2 According to its [the Bible's] full contents.

28—2

436 PALMER'S DETERMINATION [app.

supponat nisi obstaret peccatum aliquod illius, [quo] non cog-
nosceret earn, quia Deus conscientiam illius faceret murmurare
vel aliter impediret ne peccaret^. Similiter mutus vel surdus
posset vitare peccatum, licet nullam linguam intelligeret.

Ad octavam concedo quaestionem adductam, quod licet
habere in vulgari omnia nobis necessaria ad salutem.

Ad nonam etiam concedo quaestionem, quia omnia nobis
necessaria ad salutem sunt habenda in vulgari, et si aliquis sit
surdus et sciat legere, scribatur sibi in nomine Domini quod est
(f. 47, 2) necessarium ad salutem.

Ad decimam dico, quod non est generaliter verum, quod magis
nota plus movent ad devotionem; quia quandoque vetula est
magis devota quam magister in theologia, quia "pluribus minor
est ad singula sensus." Similiter, magis nota quandoque vile-
scunt et facilius veniunt in contemptum: dixit Festus Paulo:
Multae litterae faciunt te insanire 2.

Ad undecimam, nego assensum, propter illud Apoc. 10 : Quae
locuta sunt septem tonitrua, et ratio assignata est superius, in
articulo ad partem negativam illius dubii.

Ad duodecimam, dicitur quod^: In omnem ten am exivit sonus
eorum, scilicet apostolorum, qui omnem linguam sciverunt et in
omni lingua praedicaverunt omnibus quae erant eis necessaria
saluti, secundum illud Marci ultimo : Euntes praedicate evange-
lium omni creaturae, etc. Alia curiosa scripturae et ardua non
oportet quod in scriptis habeantur, nisi a clericis si qui sint, et
inter eos, scilicet barbaricos, in lingua Latina Graeca vel
Hebraica, vel alia regula et figuris grammaticalibus regulata:
sine quibus tamen est salus.

Ad tertiam decimam dico, quod stat quod : Quaecunque scripta
sunt ad nostrum doctrinam scripta sunt ^, licet non intelligamus ea,
quia possunt interpretari nobis in lingua nobis nota et probari.

Ad quartam decimam, scripta nobis ignota multa valent ad
correctionem nostram, quia possunt nobis interpretari.

Ad quintam decimam: Necesse est impleri omnia quae scripta
sunt de me^ dicit Christus; similiter necesse est impleri omnia
quaecunque scripta sunt ab hominibus ; quae, scilicet, necessaria
sunt saluti, et non alia.

Ad sextam decimam, concedo; quae nobis praecepta sunt,
habenda sunt in scriptis ne obliviscantur, quia sunt necessaria
saluti. Conformiter dico ad septimam decimam; concedo quod

1 The sentence seems corrupt, but the general sense fairly plain; a man
is not dependent on the written word to know good from evil in most cases :
God guides his conscience, unless he himself obscure the guidance by vice.

2 Cf. Act. xxvi. 24. * Psal. xviii. 5. * JRom. xv. 4.
5 Cf. Luc. xxii. 22.

II] VERNACULAR TRANSLATIONS UNLAWFUL 437

tarn necessarium est barbaris sicut Graecis, Latinis vel Hebraeis
habere legem christianam in scriptis, quantum ad omnia prae-
cepta in ea et quae sunt necessaria saluti, non quantum ad alia
secreta et difficilia et impertinentia saluti. Etiam, licet ilia esset
necessaria saluti, non tamen posset secundum omnem eius par-
tem in linguam barbaricam transferri, quia nulla lingua talis
regulatur regulis et figuris grammaticalibus, ideo aliunde de-
bemus eis providere de notitia scripturae quam per translationem
barbaricam, dando eis donum aliarum linguarum, (f. 476, j)
sicut olim dedit conversis ad fidem.

Ad octavam decimam arguebatur sic : principalis causa quare
non potest transferri in linguam barbaricam videtur esse quod
ilia non regulatur regulis grammaticalibus et figuris, cum quibus
non potest sacra scriptura a falsitate et incongruitate salvari;
sed propter ha[n]c causam non deberet ea transferri secundum
aliquam partem eius, nee quoad necessaria saluti nee quoad alia,
quia haec regulae, tropi et figurae sunt [in] omnibus partibus
scripturae sacrae, aequivocationes, cuius oppositum dictum est.
Ad istud dico negando quod omnibus partibus scripturae sunt
illae regulae, tropi et figurae, aequivocationes; quia aliquae
partes quoad sensum litteralem verificantur sine ipsis, et aliquae
non; praecepta autem legis et ea quae necessaria sunt saluti,
aperta sunt et plana: lugum^ enim mewn suave est et onus meum
leve; et quae moralia sunt quasi de iure natural! et facilia ad
credendum, unde, prae^ testimonia tua credibilia facta sunt nimis,
et ideo non indiget figuris et tropis, vel aliis, [ut] a falsitate ac
incongruitate salventur, ut alia difficilia ibidem contenta. Ad
honorem Dei, qui est benedictus in saecula. Amen. Deo gratias.

3. Purvey' s English version of his treatise, founded on the
debate on biblical translations between the Lollard, Peter
Payne, and the Dominican, Thomas Palmer, at Oxford^
1403-1405.

Trin. Camb. 333, ff. 26-30 b, from which this tract is printed, is
the only MS. which has the tract complete: a Wore. Cath. MS. has
part, and of this C.C.C. Camb. MSS. 298, § iv; 100, § i; Trin. Camb. 24;
Harl. 325 ; Vitell. D. 7 are copies 3. Foxe in his first English edition of
the AM, 1563, p. 452, printed a very mangled version of the tract
(see also 1843, ed. iii. 202; iv. 671-6). Foxe's version was not founded
on the complete MS., but on his own transcript of the Wore. MS. (for
which see Harl. 425), and the early printed editions founded on the
Wore. MS., which included those of "Hans Luft," Marlborow in
Hessen, 1530, and Richard Banckes, London [without date ; reprinted
inT. F. Dibdin's Topog. Antiq., 1816, iii. 257]. Foxe copied the first

1 Matt. xi. 30. 2 Sic in MS. Psal. xcii. 5. ' Cf. Westminsie . 34 3.

438 PURVEY'S DETERMINATION [app.

paragraph from Hans Luffs ed., then inserted two from his own
transcript, then followed the printed ed. substantially to the end, but
without acquainting the reader that the printed ed. contained about
half as much again of new matter as the Wore. MS. (see AM, iv. 671).
This new matter, quite out of keeping with the date of the original
MS., has hitherto rendered the tract of little evidential value for
historical points, drawn, as can now be seen, from Purvey's treatise
of c. 1405. The editor of Hans Luffs 1530 ed. was probably
Tindale, who published the work as part of his controversy with sir
Thomas More. This is inferred because (i) in 1528 More had issued
his Dialogue (see supra, p. 348), with its long discussion of the advi-
sability of vernacular Bibles, directed against Tindale. The latter
between 1530-34 was translating the Pentateuch, which was printed
for him by Hans Luft, of Marlborow [Marburg], during those j^ears.
Tindale did not directly answer More till 1531 : but in 1530 Hans Luft
printed this Compendyous Olde treatise shewynge home that we ought
to have the Scripture in Englyshe, with the Auctours. The preface to
the reader renders Tindale's editorship probable : " Consyderyng the
maliceousnes of our prelates and theyr adherentes, whiche so f uryously
barke against the worde of God, and specyally the newe testament
translated and set fourthe by mayster William Tyndale, whiche they
falsely prechede to be corrupte. That ye may knowe that it is not
Tyndale's translation that mouethe them, ... I haue here put in
prynt a treatyse writen about the yere of our Lorde a thousande fower
hundred. By whiche thou shalt playnly perseyue, that they wolde yet
neuer from the begyninge admyt any translation to the lay people. ..."
(2) In a similar case, Foxe stated that he printed the MS. of Thorpe's
Defence against Arundel as edited by Tindale, see AM, iii. 249: "the
said Master Tindale, (albeit he did somewhat alter and amend the
English thereof, and frame it after our manner), yet not fully in all
words, but that something doth remain, savouring of the old speech
of that time." In the case of the Compendyous Treatise, however,
Tindale added very long passages. Thorpe's Defence was also printed
for Tindale by Hans Luft: see 1863 reprint of the Compendious Olde
Treatyse by Francis Fry, p. 4; Athenaeum, Nov. 28, 1919, p. 1260.

Foxe used his transcript of the Treatyse for man^^ points in his
preface to the Gospels of the fower Evangelists, translated in the olde
Saxons' tyme, London, 1571. Thus he refers to friar Tille's sermon,
in a passage which does not occur in the AM version of the Treatyse ;
he calls him " one friar Scillie," whence Ussher's " fraterculus ScilUus "
{Hist. Dogm. anno 14 10).

In this and the following M.E. tracts, ]> is printed as th, 3 as ^ or 3/
according to the modern spelling of the word, and proper names are
given capitals: otherwise the spelling is as in Trin. MS. 333. (Not
Purvey's original MS., but written about 1400-30.) Biblical references
are not appended when the scribe gives the chapter reference cor-
rectly.

II] THE SIMPLE JEWS KNEW THE LAW 439

Agens hem that seyn that hooli wrigt schulde not or may not be
drawun in to Engliche: we maken thes resouns^. (f. 26)

Ffirst seith Bois^ in his boke De disciplina scolarium: that
children schulde be taugt in the bokis [of] Senek; and Bede
expowneth this, seying children schulden be taugt in vertues,
ffor the bokis of Senek ben morals: and for thei ben not taugt
thus in her yougthe thei conseyuen yuel maners and ben vnabel
to conseyue the sotil sciense of trewthe, seyinge the wise man:
ivisdom schal not entre in to a wicked soide ^. And moche ther of
the sentence of Bede; and Algasel in his logik seith the soule of a
man is as clene myrour newe polichid in wiche is seen sigt liche
the ymage of man. But, for the puple hath not konynge in
youthe, the[y] han derke soulis and blyndid so that thei profiten
not but in falsenes, malice and other vices; and moche ther of
this mater. O, sithen hethen philosofris wolden the puple to
profeten in natural science, how myche more schulden cristen
men willen the puple to profiten in science of vertues; for so
wolde God.

Ffor, wane the lawe was gouen^ to Moises in the mounte of
Synay, God gaf it in Ebrew for that al the pupel schuld vnder-
stonde it, and bad Moises to rede in unto hem, to the tyme thei
vndurstondyn it. And he rede it, as is pleyn in Detronomie
31°. c°. and Esdrias also redde it from morou to mydday, as it
is pleyn in his ffirst boke 8°. c". *, apertily in the stret ; and the
eeres of the puple weren entently gouen ther to and thei vnder-
stoden it. And this thei migt not haue done but if it hadde ben
redde in ther modur tonge so that the pupel, hering, felle in to
grete wepinge. In Deut.o 32°. c^. it is writen: Aske thifadris and
thei schullen schewe to thee and thin eldris, and thei schulen sei to
thee, (f . 26 h) Also the profete seith How many things he hath seid
unto ourefadris: thei schtd make hem knowen vn to her sonnes, and
the sones that scholen be borne of hem schulen rise and schullen teche
thes things, to her sonnes. And thus Petre in his first pistile:
Be ye redi to fulfille to eche man that asketh youg in resoun, infeith
and hope^. And al so Peter seith: Euery man, as he hath taken
grace, mynyster he forthe to other men^. And in the Apocalips it is
writen: The housebonde, and the wiffe seyn come; and he that
hereth seith he cometh '; that Crist (that is heed of hoH chirche) is

the housbonde, and parfite prechouris and doctouris (that is the

wiffe) clepen the puple to the weies of heuene, and iche man that

1 Boethius. For this tract, often attributed to him in -the middle ages,
see PL, 64, col. 1223 flf. The study of the works of Seneca is there recom-
mended several times, cf. coll. 1225. 1227.

2 Sap. i. 4. ' given. * Esd. lib. 11. 8, 3.
» I Pet. iii. 15. * Id. iv. 10. • Apoc. xxii. 17.

440 purvey's determination [app.

herith clepe other. Thus this is confermede in Actus of apostiHs,
there as the apostilis weren but rude men and fischeris thei
[aljlegeden the prophecies; as Peter in the first chapiter seid:
The Hooli Goost be the mouthe of Dauid [spake] he[ fore concerning]
Judas that was the duke of hem that token Crist, and more processe
there. In the 2°. c^. Peter seith It is writen he the prophete Joel:
It schal he in the last daies seith the Lorde, I schal schede ougt of
my spirit vpon iche flesche ; youre sones andyoure dougtteris schulen
prophecie and youre yonge men schullen se viciouns'^ and more
ther in process. Also in the iij. c^. James seith, allegginge the
prof ecie : Aftur thes things I schal turne agene [and] I schal make
vp the tabernacle^. And thus the apostihs, that ben clepid ydiotes
be scripture, allegeden here and in many other placis the pro-
fecies. And of this it is notabile that the lewde puple in the olde
lawe knewe of the lawe notwithstandig that God for synne hadde
departed the tunges of hem, as it is opon in the ij. chapitur of
Genesis. If god wole,he loueth not less vs cristen men in thes daies
than he dide (f. 27) the pupel in the olde testament, but better,
as he hath scheued be the mene of Cristis passioun and be the
newe parfite lawe gouen to vs ; and herf ore on the witsondaie he
gaf to many diuerse nac[i]ouns knowing of his lawe be [their]
one tunge, in tokene that he wolde alle men knewe his lawe, to
his worschipe and her profite. Ffor, as it is writen in the boke
of Numbers, the 11. c"., wane Moises had choson seuenty elder
men and the spirite of God rested on hem and thei profecieden,
twey men, as Eldad and Medad, profeciden in castelis^, and on
seid to Moises : Sir forhede hem and he seide Wat, enviest thu for
me? w[h]o schal lette that alle the puple prof ecie, if god gif hem his
spirite? and in actus of apostihs, the ii^. c"., seith Peter, wane
he had cristened Cornelie, and his felowes repreued hym therof,
for he was an hethen man, he seid to hem, // God hath gouen to
hem the same grace that he hath geuen to vs, wiche heleuen in our
Lorde Ihesu Crist, w[h]o am I that may forhede God. And sent
Poule seith in 1° Cor. 14°. c". / wole euery man to speike with
tunges more forsothe to prof ecie. Also he seith : I schal preye with
spirit and I schal preie with mynde, that is with affeccoun and
with vndurstandinge ; and this is myche better than al onli to
haue deuocioun in wordes and not in vndurstanding. And this
preueth the texte aftur, that seith: how schal he sei amen vpon
this blessing that wot not wat thu seiste? and on this seith the
doctor Lire^. If the puple vnderstood the preyour of the prest,
it schal the better be lade in to God and the more deuoutelie

1 Act. ii. 17. 2 jfi XV. 16.

* Num. xi. 26, "in the camp."

^ Nicholas de Lyra; see supra, p. 166.

II] OTHER VERNACULAR TRANSLATIONS EXIST 441

answere amen. Also in the same chapeter he seith : I wole rather
fyue wordes he spoken to the vndur standing of men, than ten thou-
sand that the[y] vndersfonden not.

Also seuenti doctouris, with outen mo, by fore (f. 276) the in-
carnacioun translatiden the Bibile into Greek ougt of Ebrew ; and
aftur the ascencoun many translatiden al the Byble, summe into
Greek and summe into Latyne. But seint lerom translatide it
out of Ebrew in to Latyne: w[h]os translacioun we vsen most.
And so it was translated in to Spaynesche tunge, Frensche tunge
and Alemayne; and other londes also han the Bibel in ther
modur tunge, as Italic hath it in Latyn ; for that is ther modur
tonge, and be many yeeris han had. Worschipful Bede in his
first boke De Gestis Angulorum 2°. c°.^ tellith that seint Oswold
kyng of Northeumberlond axide of the Scottys an holi pischop
Aydan to preche his puple, and the kynge of hym self inter-
preted it on Englische to the puple. If this blessid dede be
aloued^ to the kynge of al hooli chirche, how not now as wel
augte it to be alowed a man to rede the gospel on Englische and
do ther aftur? It was herde of a worthi man of Almaine, that
summe tyme a Flemynge (his name was James Merland) ^ trans-
latid al the Bibel into Flemyche, for wiche dede he was somoned
before the pope of grete enmyte, and the boke was taken to
examynacoun and trwly apreued*; it was deliuered to hym
agene in conficioun^ to his enmyes. Also venerabile Bede, lede
by the spirit of God, translatid the Bibel or a grete parte of the
Bibile, w[h]os originals ben in many abbeis in Englond. And
Sistrence in his fifte booke^ the 24. 0°. seith the euangelie of Jon
was drawen into Englice be the for seide Bede; wiche euangelie
of Ion and other gospellis ben y[e]t in many placis, of so oolde
Englische that vnnethe can any man rede hem; ffor this Bede
regnede an hooly doctor aftur the incarnacoun seuene hundered
(f. 28) yeer and xxxij. Also a man of Loundon, his name was
Wyring, hadde a Bible in Englische of northen speche, wiche was
seen of many men, and it semed too honndred yeer olde. Also
seint Poule seith : // our gospel is hid it is hid to hem that schal be
dampned"^: and eft he seith he that knoweth not schal not be knowen
of God. Also Cistrence in his sext bok the i. c^. seith that
Al[f]rede the kynge ordined opone^ scoUs of diuerse artes in
Oxenforde; and he turnede the best lawes in to his modir tunge,
and the sawter also^; and he regned aftur the incarnacioun eigt

1 PL, 95. col. 119. 2 Allowed.

' See supra, p. 71. * Approved.

* Confusion. ^ Higden's Polychronicoyi, RS, vi. 224.

" 2 Cor. iv. 3. * Open, public. See Polychronicon, vi. 354.

^ See supra, p. 135.

442 purvey's determination [APP.

hundered yeer and seuenti and thre. Also seint Thomas [Aquinas]
seith that barbarus is he that vnderstandith not that he redeth
in his modor tunge and therfore, seith the apostile^, If I knewe
not the vertu of the voice to wome I speike, I schal he to hym barbarus
and he that speiketh to me barbarus, that is to sey, he vnderstan-
dith not that I sey, ne I vnderstande not wat he seith. Sum men
thenkyne hem to be barbaros wiche han not propur vnder-
stan[din]ge of that thei reden, to answere therto in her modor
tunge. Also he seith that Bede drew in to Englische the liberal
artis, leste Engliche men schuldon be holden barbarus. This
seint Thomas, super primum posecicorum^, exponens hoc vocabu-
lum Barbarus. Also the grett sutil clerk Lyncolne^ seith in a
sermon that bigynneth Scriptum est de leuitis; If (he seith) any
prest seie he can not preche, oo remedie is, resyne he vp his
benefice; another remedie is, if he wol not thus, record* he in the
woke ^ the nakid tixt of the sonndaie gospel, that he kunne the
groos story and telle it to his puple; that is, if he vndurstonde
Latyne ; and so [do] he this euery woke of the yeer, and for sothe he
(f. 286) schal profite wel. For thus preched the lord seyng, Joh. 6°,
The wordes that I speike to youg ben spirit and lyf. If for sothe he
vnderstode no Latyn, go he to oon of his neigtboris that vnder-
standith, wiche wole charitabily expone it to hym; and thus
edifie he his flock, that is his puple. Thus seith Lyncolne, and
on this argueth a clerk and seith: If it is leueful to preche the
naked text to the pupel, it is also lefful to write it to hem; and
consequentliche, be proces of tyme, so al the Bibil. Also a nobil
hooly man, Richerde F,[r]myteS, drewe oon Englice the sauter,
with a glose of longe proces and lessouns of dirige and many
other tretis, by wiche many Engliche men hau ben gretli
edified. And if he were cursed of God that wolde the puple
schulde be ' lewder either wors than thei ben. Also sire Wiliam
Thorisby^, erchebischop of York, did do to drawe a tretys in
Englisce be a worschipf ul clerk w[h]os name was Gayirik; in the
wiche weren conteyned the articulis of the feith, seuene dedli
synnes, the werkes of mercy and the comandements; and sente
hem in smale pagynes to the comyn puple to lerne this and to
know this, of wiche ben yit manye a componye in Englond.

^ I Cor. xiv. 1 1 ; quoted in the work attributed to S. Thomas in the Parma,
1867 ed., In octo lihros Politicorum expositio : tom. xxi. 369. This work the
1882 editors reject as spurious (tom. i. col. cclxiii).

'^ ¥or Politicorum. * Grosseteste. For this sermon, see supra, p. 141.

* Let him think over (recordor). * Week.

« Richard Rolle of Hampole. See supra, p. 144. "Dirige," Rolle's Latin
Novem lectiones mortuorum.

' lerned expunctuated. Apparently some words missing.

* See supra, p. 196.

II] ROLLE AND FITZ RALPH 443

But ther ben summe that seien: If the gospel were on Engliche,
men mygten Ugtly erre therinne. But wel touchith this holi
man Richad Hampol suche men expownyng this tixte: Ne
auferas de ore meo verbum veritatis vsquequaque^ , ther he seith
thus: Ther ben not fewe but many wolen sustene a worde of
falsenes for God, not willing to beleue to konynge and better
than thei ben. Thei ben Hke to the frendes of Job: that, wiles
thei enforsiden hem to defende God, they offendeden greuosly in
hym; and, thoug suche ben slayne and don myracles, (f. 29) thei
neuertheles ben stynkyng martirs. And to hem that seien that
the gospel on Enliche wolde make men to erre, wyte wele that
we fynden in Latyne mo heretikes than of ale other langagis;
ffor the Decres^ rehersith sixti Latyn eretikes. Also the hooli
euangehstis writen the gospell in diuerse langages, as Matheu in
Indee, Marke in Ytalie, Luck in the partyes of Achaie, and John
in Asie aftur he hadde writun the ApocaUps in the yle of
Pathomos ; and al thes writun in the langage of the same cuntre,
as seith Ardmakan ^. Also Ardmakan in the Book of quesHouns
seith that the sacrament mai wel be made in iche comoun
langage; for so (as he seith) diden the apostilis. But we coue-
teyten not that, but prey Anticrist that we moten haue oure
bileue in EngHsche. Also we that han moche comyned with the
Jewis knowen wel that al mygty men of hem, in wat londe they
ben born, yit they han in Ebrew the Bible, and thei ben more
actif of the olde lawe thane any Latyn man comonh; yhe, as
wel the lewde men of the Jewes: as prestis. But it is red in
comyne of the prestes, to fulfille ther prestes office and to edifi-
cacoun of porayle^ that for slouthe stoudieth nogt. And the
Grekis, wiche ben nobel men, han al this in ther owne langage.
But yit aduersaries of trewith seien, wane men rehersen that
Grekis and Latyns han al in ther owne langage, the clerkis of
hem speiken grammaticalliche and the puple vnderstondith it
not. Witte thei that, thoug a clerke or another man thus lerned
can sette his wordis on EngHche better than a rewde man, it
foloweth not her of that oure langage schuld be destried^ It
were al on[e] to sei this, and to kitte« oute the tunges of hem
that can not speke (f. 2gb) thus curiosly. But thei schulde vnder-
stonde that " grammaticahche " is not eUis but abite' of rigt
spekyng and rigt pronounsyng and rigt wrytinge.

But Frere Tilled that seide before thi buschop of Londoun,

1 Psal. cxviii. 43. The quotation from Rolle is loose, cf. Bramley, Psalter,
416.

2 Gratian, Decretum, cf. JE. Friedberg's ed. 1878, Leipzig.

3 See supra, p. 142. * poor people.

* destroj^ed. * cut. ' the habit.

* See supra, p. 294.

444 PURVEY'S DETERMINATION [app.

heerynge^ an hundrid men, that Jerom seide he errid in trans-
lating of the Bibel, is lyk to Elymas, the wiche wolde haue lettid
a bischope or a Juge to heere the byleue; to w[h]om Poule seid:
0 thou ful of al trecherie, and of al false teching to turne the bus-
chop from the beleue, thou schalt be hlynde to a tyme^. This [is]
writun in the Dedus of the apostihs 13°. 0°. Ffor Jerom seith
in the prolog of Kynges: I am not knowyng to my self in any
man'er me to haue [erred, in] changyng any thinge from the
Ebrew trewith. Wei I wot, he seide sum tyme that holy writ
was false aftur the letter. But aftur, wane Austyn hadde writen
to him, and he to him agen, he grauntid wele that it was trewe,
as he rehersith in a pistile, and in the Prolog of the Bible; and
was glad and ioyeful of his translacoun; and therfor, wane he
hath rehersithd al the bookis of the Bibel, thane he seith in the
Prolog of Penteteuke^: I praie the, dere brother, lyue amonge
these, haue thi meditacoun in these, knowe noon other thing
but these. But Jerom hadde many enemyes for translating of
the Bibel, as he rehersith in the ffirst Prolog, to his enemyes
thus: Whi art thou turmented be [sic] enmeye? what stirist
thou the willes of vnkunnynge men agens me? if it semeth to the
that I haue erred in myn translacion : aske the Ebrew councel, with
the maisteris of diuerse citees^. In the secunde Prolog he seith
this: Weseeyn (rehersing the sentence bifore), leest we ben seen
to holde oure pes agens the ba[ckbi]tourus^ And in the same he
seith : We, hasting to oure contre, schullen passe with (f. 30) a
deffe eere to the dedely soungyis of the mermaidens. And thus in
many prologis he scorneth his enemyes and lettith not his hooly
werk. But [he] seith : / seide I schal kepe my weies that I trespas
not in my tounge: I haue put keping to my mouthe wane the
synfulman hath stande agens me^. These ben the wordis of lerom
rehersing the profigte.

Also it is knowen to many men that in the tyme of Kyng
Richerd, whose soule God a soile, in to a parliment was put a
bille ' be assent of two erchebischopis and of the clergie to anulle
the Bibel that tyme translatid in to Engliche, and also other
bokis of the gospel translatid in to Enghche; wiche, wanne it
was seyn of lordis and comouns, the good duke of Lancastre Ion
(w[h]os soule God asoile, for his mercy) answered ther to sharpely,

^ in the hearing of.

^ Act. xiii. 10, freely applied to fourteenth century events.

* Actually, in the Prologus Galeatus.

* Actually, in the prologue to the Pentateuch, Ad Desiderium.

* calumniantibus tacere. In losue Praefaiio.

* Vulg. Psal. xxxviii. 2.

' AM, IV. 674, reads "Bible," from a mistake in the 1530 ed. of the Coni'
pendyous Treatise. See supra, p. 437.

II] PURVEY ON ARUNDEL 445

seying this sentence : we wel not be the refuse of alle men ; for,
sithen other naciouns han Goddis lawe, wiche is lawe of oure
byleue, in ther owne modur langage, we wolone haue oure in
Enghche, w[h]o that euere it bigrucche; and this he affermede
with a grete othe.

Also the bischope of Caunturbiri, Thomas Arrundel, that nowe
is, seide a sermon in Westimister^ there as weren many hundred
puple, at the biriyng of queue Anne, (of w[h]os soule God haue
mercy) ; and, in his comendynges of hir, he seide it was more
Joie of hir than of any whoman that euere he knewe; ffor, not
withstanding that sche was an alien borne, sche hadde on
Engliche al the foure gospeleris with the docturis vpon hem 2,
and he seide sche hadde sent hem vnto him, and he seide thei
weren goode and trewe, and comended hir in that sche was so
grete a lady and also an alien, and wolde so lowliche studiee in
so vertuous bokis. And he blamed in that sermoun scharpeli
the necligence of prelatis (f. 30 ft) and of other men, in so miche
that summe seiden he wolde on the morowe leue vp his office of
chaunceler and forsake the worlde; and than it hadde be the
last sermoun that euere thei herde.

4, Wycliffe's [?] tract: The holt prophete Dauid seith (f. i)

This tract, printed from Ff. 6. 31, § 3, is followed in the MS. by
four other Lollard tracts, which follow each other without incipit,
explicit or title, and give the appearance at first of forming a single
treatise (ff. 1-16 b. The holy prophet David saith; ff. 16 6-27, Meekness;
ff. 27 fe-35 h, Here sueth the sayings of divers doctors upon the xxvi
chapter of Matthew; ff. 36-42, Chrisostom and some other doctors here).
The MS. contains also another Lollard tract on the Four errors which
letten the very knowing of holy writ, and the hand of these tracts is
c. 1380-1400. The literary style, as well as the manner of quoting
the Bible, differentiates The holy Prophet David saith from the four
which follow it (see p. 268), which use the EV. [Cf.f.276: "Forsooth
them supping, Jesu took bread and blessed and brake" = EV (the
LV has: "and while they supped "); cf. also f. 28 b, "And he, taking
the cup, did thankings"; f. 296, "the disciples supping Jesu took
bread,". . ."the disciples eating Jesu took bread, and he blessing
brake and gave it to them " . . . " and the bread taking, he did thank-
ings and brake"; f. 30, "and he doing thankings. . .," all EV.] It is
so rare to find quotations from a particular biblical version in
mediaeval tracts, that these quotations would seem to imply a very
close acquaintance of the author with the EV, such as would have
been possessed by Nicholas Hereford or one of the original circle of
translators, e.g. John Aston, who "taught and writ accordingly and
full busily, where, when, and to whom he might " (Pollard, 119). The

1 See p. 278. * Purvey's English patristic glosses, see id.

446 THE HOLI PROPHETE DA UID SEITH [APP.

holy prophet David saith was written, however, probably before the
making of the first Lollard version, and by Wycliffe (see supra, p. 270) .

The holi prophete Dauid seith in the persone of a iust man :
Lord, how swete hen thi spechis to my chekis^; that is, to myn
vndirstondyng and loue ; and the prophete answerith and seith :
Tho ben swettere than hony to my mowth. Eft ^ the same prophet
seith in the persone of a iust man : Lord I was glad of thine spechis
as he that fyndith many spoilis eithir praies^. Eft the same
prophete seith : The domes of the Lord ben trewe and iustified in
hem silf; tho ben more desireable than gold and precious stones, and
swettere than hony and hony comb; ffor whi? thi servant kepith
tho, and moche rewarde is to kepe hem^. Therefor he seith: Moche
pees is to hem that lotien thi lawe: and to hem is no sclander^. For
thei gyuen no sclandre to othere men: bi euel dede ne bi yuel
word; and thei ben not sclandrid for tribulacion and perse-
cucion ; but thei suffre gladh and ioiefuUi (f . i b) tribulacion and
persecucion for the laue of God. Eft the same prophete seith :
Blessid is the man that gede not in the counceil of vnfeith/ul men,
and stood not in the wei of synners, and sat not in the chaier of
pestelence (that ys, pride eithir wordU glorie), but his wille is in
the lawe of the Lord, and he schal hawe mynde bi nygt and bi day
in the lawe of the Lord^. Ffor, as the same prophete seith: Lord,
thi word is a lanterne to my fet (that ys, to rule myne affeccions
and myne werkis), and thi word is ligt to my pathis"^ (that is,
myne thowttis and myne counceilis). And eft he seith: The
comaundement of the Lord is ligtful, and ligtneth iyes of the sowle^;
that is, resoun and wille; and eft he seith: The declaryng ofthyne
wordis gyueth goostli ligt, and gytieth vndirstondyng to meke men^.

Ffor thise auctorites and siche othere (f . 2) sum men of good wille
redin besih the text of hoU writ, for to kunne it and kepe it in
here lyuynge and teche it to othere men bi hooU ensample. And
for the staat that thei stondyn ynne, and for this werk, thei han
the blissyng of God, as he seith in the gospel, Luc. xi": Blessid
ben thei that heryn the word of God and kepin it; and in the first
c.[hapter] of Apocahps seynt Joon seith: He is blessid that heerith
and redith the wordis of this prophecie, and kepith tho thyngis that
ben writen ther ynne. But othere veyn men besie hem faste to
studie to kunne the lettre of Goddis lawe and thei bisi hem nat
treuh to kepe the sentence ther of. And therfore thei disceyuen
hem self and in maner sclaundren the lawe of God. Ffirst thei
schulde studie to kunne wel the trewe sentence of Goddis lawe,

1 Psal. cxviii. 103. 2 again. ^ Psal. cxviii. 162.

4 Psal. xviii. 11. * Psal. cxviii. 165. * Psal. i. i.

' Psal. cxviii. 105. * Psal. xviii. 9- ' Psal. cxviii. 130.

II] STUDY THE BIBLE MEEKLY 447

aftirward to kepe it in werk and thanne to speke therof (f. 26)
mekeli and charitabli to the edificacion of othere men ; for if thei
iangelyn oonli of this blessid lawe to schewe here cunnynge
abowe othere men and kepe not it opynh in here wirkis but doon
opynh the contrarie, thei ben contrarie to hem silf and this
cunniynge turnyth hem to more dampnacion. Ffor Crist seith
in the gospel, Luc. xijo; A seruaunt that knowith the wille of his
lord and dooth it not schal be hetyn with many betyngis. James
seith in the iiij. c. : It is synne to hym that can good and dooth it
not. And Poul seith, Kunnynge makith a man proud^, that is
nakid kunnynge withoute goode werkis, whanne it is medUd
with pride veyn glorie and boost. Sich men semen to do goos[t]li
auoutrie with the word of God, for there thei schulde take of the
Hooh Goost trewe vndirstandyng of hooU writ bi gret meknesse
and hooh praier, to brynge forth very charite and goode werkis.
Thei takyn the nakid ^ (f. 3) vndirstondynge bi presumcion of
mannes witt, and bryngen forgt pride veynglorie and boost, to
coloure here synnes and disceiue sutilh here negebours. Siche
maner of peple schulden takyn hede what Poul comaundyth, to
kiinne no more than nedith to kunne, but to kunne to sobirnesse^;
that is as moche as perteyneth to saluacion of thin owene sowle,
eithir to edificacion to othere mennes.

And Bernard expounneth this auctorite, On Cantica, xxxvj.
sermon, and writith thus: "To vndirstonde to soberness, is to
kepe most wakyngh what it bihoueth to kunne more and
sunnere^. The tyme is schort: ech trewe science is good in it
silf, but thou that hastist for the schortness of tyme to worche
thyn owne helthe, with drede and tremblyng, do thi besynesse
to kunne sunnere and more tho thyngis that ben ner to helthe.
AUe metis (f . 3 b) ben goode wiche God hath fourmed, natheles
yif in takynge hem thou kepist not maner and ordre thou makist
hem not goode. Ffele ye also this thing of sciences wiche I seie of
metis. Poul seith : He that gessith hym silf to kunne ony thyng,
wool not yit, hou it bihoueth hym to kunne ^. Poul appreueth not
a man that can manie thyngis if he cunne not the maner of
kunnynge. Poul hath set the fruit and profit of science in the
maner of kunnynge; the maner of kunnynge is that thou wete
by what ordre, by what studie, and for what entent it behoueth
to kunne alle thyngis. Bi what ordre that thou kunne: first
that thyng that ledith riphere^ to helthe. Bi what studie, that

1 I Cor. viii. i. * word expunctuated. ' Rom. xii. 3.

* sooner. ^ i Cor. viii. 2.

6 Sic, apparently, the comp. of "ripely"; cf. EV, 2 Mace. vii. 37: "more
rijply for to be maad helpful/' and NED, Ripely.

448 THE HOLI PROPHETE DA UID SEITH [aPP.

thou lerne more brennyngli that thyng that ledith greethere to
the loue of God and negebour. Ff or what ende, that thou lerne not
to veynglorie, (f. 4) eithir to coriouste\ eithir to ony sich thyng,
but oneh to edifiyng of thi silf or of thi negebour. Sum men
wollen kunne for that ende oneh that thei cunne, and it is foul
coriouste. And sum men wolen cunne that thei be knowen, and
it is a foul vanyte. And sum men wolen cunne for to sille here
kunnyng for mony eithir for honowris, and it is foul wynnynge.
Sum men wolen kunne for to edifie here negebours and that is
charite. Sum men wole kunne that thei hem silf be edified, and
that is prudence: thise tweyne laste ben preciable. Of alle the
othere heere thei James seiynge : Synne is to hym that can good
and dooth it nat-: as mete undefied^ gendrith yuele humours and
corrumppith the bodi and not nourischith, so moche kunnyng
had in mynde, if it is not defied bi charite, whanne the soule is
not maid good bi (f. 46) witnessynge of the lyf of vertues, thilke
kunnynge schal be arettid^ into synne, as mete that is turnyd
into schrewid and noiful humors. Wher a man that can good
and not dooynge good, schal he not haue bolnyngis^ and tur-
mentis in his conscience, as who seiyhis, wher he schal not hawe
in hym sylf answere of deeth, and of dampnacion. How ofte
the word of God that is seid schal come into his mende : as who
seighis : Ffor a seruaunt that knowith the wil of his lord and dooth
it not schal be betyn wit many woundis. Al this is the sentence of
Bernard ^.

Therfore alle men that wolen stodie hooli writ scholden studie
to this entent, to know here owene freelte and defautis and
eschewe deedh synnes and to kepe wilfulH the comaundements of
God, and to do the werkis of merci and gewe hooli ensample (f. 5)
to here negebours ; wherf ore the wise man seith : Sone thou that
desirest wisdam, kepe rigtwisnesse and God schal gyue it to the''.
And eft : Sone, thou that neigist to the seruice of God, stonde in
drede and rigtwisnes, and make thi soul redi to temptacion^, bi
Godis grace and thyn owene bes3messe. Ffor the drede of the
lord is bigynnyng of wisdom^. And seynt Gregor seith: Hooli
writ is to us to se therynne our defautis and amende hem, and
to se goode ensamplis of hooli fadris, and to kepe tho in oure
lyuynge.

Cristene men wondren moche on the weiwarnesse of diuers
clerkis that bosten that thei han passynly the cunnynge of hooli
writ, sithyn thei makyn hem self moost vnable therto: for thei

1 Curiosity. " lac. iv. 17. ^ Undigested.

* Accounted. « Swellings. « PL, 183, coll. 967-9.

' Ecclesiastici i. ^^. ^ Id. ii. i. ' Pro v. i. 7.

II] PROUD CLERKS LACK UNDERSTANDING 449

feynen to studie kunne and preche hooli writ for pride of the
word, for couetise of ertheli goodis, (f. 56) and for wombe ioie, to
leve in delices, bodeli ese and ydilnesse. Agenes hem seith God,
Prou. xijo. c. He that suyth ydilness is most fool, and the lord
Ihesu seith Mt. xjo. c. Ffadir, lord of henene and of herthe and
knoweleche to the, that is I herie the, for thou hast hid thise thyngis,
that is preuites of hooh writ, fro wise men and prudent of the
world, and thou hast schewid tho to meke men. And Crisostom
seith that good leuynge is a lanterne to brynge men to veri vndir-
stondyng of holi writ, and with oute good lyuyng and the drede
of God no man is wise. And the wise man seith, Sapienc. ij".
Wisdom schal not entre into an yuel willid soule nether schal duelle
in a hodi suget to synnes'^; sithen these grete synnes bifore seid
makyn the dewel to dwell and to regne in the sowle of siche
veyn clerkis ; no wondir, (f . 6) thoug he brynge hem to gostli bUnd-
nesse and fals vndirstondyng of hooli writ. These men semen
grete foolis, that poisone hem self bi the mystakynge and vndir-
stondynge of the hoolsum mete of hooli writ, and thei bind hem
silf bi ropis of deedli sinnes, and betake hem prisoneris to the
deuyl, and bryngen the chayn of deedli synne aboute here nekk:
wherbi thei schollen ben hangid in helle ; and therfore hooli writ
seith, Prou. v. c. The wikkidnesses of an yuel man takyn him, and
ech is streigtli bounden with the ropis of hise sinnes. Thise men ben
grete foolis in alle maner, for if thei han verili the vndirstondyng
of holi writ, and doon wetyngli and custumabli ther-agenes,
their goon lyuynge doun to helle as seynt Austin seith on this
wordonthesalm : Descendant in infernum viuentes ^, and if thei han
not the trew vndirstonding (f. 6 b) of hooli writ and bosten that
thei han it passande alle othere men, thanne be thei open foolis,
fouli disseyued of the deuel the world and of there fleisch.
Pryncipali thise clerkis ben grete folis that with sich lyuynge
prechyn opynli the lawe of God, ffor as Crisostom seith on
M* V. c. on that word Vos estis sal terre, vos estis lux mundi: he '
that lyueth yuele opynli in knowyng of the peple, and prechith
the laue of God, dampnyth hymself, sclandrith othere men and
blasfemeth God.

Siche proude clerkis and blyndid in peyne of here synnes
schulden taken hede what Crist seith in M* xxiij°. c. to the blynde
Saduceis, where M* writith thus: Ye erren, ye kunne not the
[s]cripturis neither the vertu of God^, wheron Crisostom writith
thus in the xxxviij omelie, VVisli^ Crist repreueth first the
necligence of hem, for thei redden not. (f. 7.) The secunde tyme

1 Sap. i. 4. ^ Psal. liv. 16.

^ Matt. xxii. 29. * Wisely.

D. W. B. 29

450 THE HOLI PROPHETE DAUID SEITH [APP.

he repreueth here ignorance, for thei knewyn not God; ffor the
science of God cometh of diligence of redynge: truU ignorance
of God is dougter of necligence. TreuU if not alle men redynge
knowyn God, how schal he know that redith not? thanne men
redynge knowe no treuthe, whanne thei redyn not wyllynge to
fynde treuthe. He that redith scriptures of God and wole fynde
God, and his good lyuynge is maad as the legt of lampe bifore
hise iyen of his herte, and openeth the wai of treuthe. TreuU he
that hastith not to leue worthiU to God and redith of God,
sekith not God to his helthe, but onU the kunnynge of God to
ven glorie. Therfore thoug he rede euere he schal neuere fynde; as
neithir philosophiris founden, wiche sougten for the same (f. yh)
cause. Gessist thou that prestis of Saduceis redden not scrip-
turis ? but thei mygte not fynde God in hem, for thei wolde not
lyue worthiH to God; ffor goode wordis mygte not teche hem,
the which here yuele werkis taugten, that is blyndid in errour.
Ffor whi; sich is scripture to a man not willynge to lyue aftir
God, as if ony man expounne lernynge of bataile to an erthe
teliere^ not hauynge will for to figte. And so agenward^ of a
knygt, thoug he here aldai wordis of his declaryng he mai no
thing vndirstonde or take, for he hath no desire to his lore: ffor
^xsjc.i,. where is mannes desire, there his witt is dressid: this is the
sentense of Crisostom^.

But of all foohs blyndid of the deuel thise ben most folis, that

seyn and mayntenen opynli that holi writ is fals. Ffor Dauid

seith : Alle the (f. 8) comoimdementis of the lord ben faithful: the ben

maid in treuthe and equite^. And eft, Dauid seith to God: The

begynnynge of thynne wordis is treuthe; and eft he seith to God:

Thi laue is treuthe, and eft, Alle thyne comaundementis ben treuthe.

Item God seith, the viij. c. of Prouerbis, Alle myne wordis ben

rigtful, and no schrewid thyng and no weiward thyngis is in hem,

tho ben rigtful to hem that vndirstonden, and thei ben euene to hem

that fyndyn kunnynge. Also in the xxxc. of Prou. hoh writ seith:

Euery word of god is a scheld of feir^ that is purid in treuthe and

charite, to hem that hopyn in hym, and Jon seith in the ende of

Apocalips : Thise wordis of the lord ben most feithful ^, and oure

lord Ihesu seith, The lord is feithful in alle hise wordis and he is

hooli in alle hese werkis ^. But thise heretikes seyn cursidH (f. 86)

that God is fals and his la we ys fals, for if the lawe of God is fals,

as thei seyn opynly, thanne God is fals sithen he is auctour of this

lawe ; and yit these folis seyn agens hem self, whanne thei seyn

^ earth-tiller. - on the other hand.

* Psal. ex. S: cf. cxviii i6o; id. cxli. ; id. Ixxxvi.

* Shield of fire; purid, purified.

^ Apoc. xix. g. * Psal. cxliv. 13.

II] PREPARATION FOR BIBLE STUDY 451

that hooli writ is fals : ffor yf it is holy, it is nat fals in ony maner,
and agenward if it is fals, it is not hooli. Thise heretikis mys
vndirstonden hooli writ arid they clepin her owuene errour hooli
writ, and thus the deuyl blyndith hem an disseywyth hem and
be-iapith hem: as a drunke man demeth of a candele to be
tweyne or thre, so these foolis demen that hooly writ hath many
false vndirstondyngis where it hath oonli trewe vndirstondyng
aftir the entent of the Hooli Gost. Therfore seynt Jerome and
Ysedere seyn^: 24° q. 3°. C. heresis et c°. quidam: Who euere
vndirstondeth hooli writ othirwise than the Hooli Goost askith,
of whom is wreten, he may be clepid an heretik; and seynt
Austyn seith in his (f . 9) epistil to Jerom : If ony part of holy writ
were fals al were suspect. Thise heretikis wolden menyn thus, that
the text of hooli writ is fals, but here fleischli vndirstondyng is
trewe and of auctorite, and thus thei magnefiien hem self and
her errour more than God and hooly writ. And thus thei ben
opyn anticristis and moost perilous heretikis that euere risen vp
agens hooli chirche, but as blasfemers of God were stoned of al
the peple bi Goddis doom in Moises la we, Leuetici xxiiij, so alle
cristene men schulde stone thise heretikis and blasfemers bi
stonis of the Gospel, that is scharp and opyn repreuynge, and
castynge out of cristene lond.

But leue we alle thise cursidenessis biforeseid, and comforte
we cristine peple to take trustili and deyutously^ the text of
hooly writ and the trewe vndirstondyng therof. Cristene men
schulden preye deuoutli to God, auctor of al wisdom and kun-
nynge, that he giue to (f. 96) hem trewe vndirstondyng of hooli
writ. Thus seith the wyse man : Lord, giwe thou to me wysdoom
that stondith about the setis^, that I wete what failith to me and
what is plesant befor thee in al tyme. The secund tyme, thei
schulde meke hem silf to God in doynge penaunce that God
opene to hem the trewe vndirstondyng of his lawe, as he openede
witt to hise apostolis to vndirstonde hooh scripture. The thridde
thei schulden sugette hem self to the wille of God, and bileue
stidfastly that his laue is trewe, and trust feithfuli in Goddis
help, and for this thei schullen haue the bUssyng of God and the
blesse of hewene, and schullen graciousli be herd in here preier;
for God dispicith not the praier of meke men and he herith the
desire of pore men that knowen verili that thei haue no good but of
God. The fourthe tyme thei schulden meke hem self to here bre-
theren, and enquere mekeli of euery lerned man and speciah (f. 10)
of wel-welHd^ men and weel lyuynge the trewe vndirstondyng
of hooh writ, and be thei not obstinat in ther owne wit but gyue

1 In Gratian's Decretum. ^ duteously.

' Sap. ix. 4. * willed.

29 — 2

453 THE HOLI PROPHETE DA UID SEITH [APP.

stede and credence to wiser men that han the sperit of wisdom
and of grace. The fifthe tyme, rede thei besili the text of the
newe testament and take thei ensample of the hooly Hyf of Crist
and of hise apostiUs, and truste thei fuiU to the goodnesse of the
Hooh Goost, whic is spesial techere of wel wilhd men. Ffor
Crist seith in the gospel to hise discipHs: The Hooli Goost schal
teche you al treuthe that is necessarie to helthe of soulis^ ; and Joon
seith in his epistil: That anoyntyng, that is grace of the Hooli
Goost, techith yow of all thingis that perteyneth to helthe of sowle ^.
The sixte tyme, thei schulden see and studie the trewe and opyn
exposicion (f. loh) of hooli doctours and othere wise men as thei
may eseli and goodli come therto.

Lat cristene men trauaile feithfulli in thise vj weies, and be
not to moche aferid of obiectiouns of enemyes seyynge that the
lettere sleeth. Thise enemyes menyn thus: that the lettere of
hooli writ is harmful to men, and fals and repreuable^, sithen
that it sleeth men by deeth of synne; but sekirli thei mystaken
the wordis of hooly writ, and here mystakyng and weiward
menynge and here wickide lyuynge bryngen in deeth of soule
that is synne. But agens here fals menynge Crist seith in the
gospel of Joon vi. cap. The wordis wiche I haue spoken to you ben
sperit and liyf, and in the same chapetre seynt Peter seith to
Crist, Lord, thou hast wordis of euerlastyng liyf. Poul seith
ijo T[h]ess. ij. that the lord Ihesu hi the spirit of his mouth, that
is his hooli and trewe wordis, schal sle anticrist, and the prophete
Isaie seith xj. c. that God by the spirit of his lippis schal (f. ii)
sle the wickid man, that is anticrist. Thanne sithen the wordis of
Crist ben wordis of euerlastyng liyf, that is, brynge trewe men to
euerlastyng blisse, and sithen thise wordis schulyn sle anticrist,
the wordis of Crist been ful hooly and ful migty and ful profitable
to trewe men. But Poul menyth thus by auctorite of the Hooly
Goost, whanne he seyth, the lettere sleeth, that cerymonyes eithir
sacrifices of the elde law withoutyn goostli vndirstondyng of the
newe lawe sleeth men bi errour of mysbileue ; ffor if men holden
that bodeli circumcisioun is nedful now as it was in the elde
testament, it is errour and mysbileue agens the treuthe of the
gospel. Also if men holden that the sacrifice of bestes is nedful
now as it was bifore Cristis passioun, it is errour and mysbeleue
agens Crist and his gospel. Therfore this lettere vndirstonden thus
fleischli sleeth (f. lib) the mys vndirstonders ; therfore Poul seith,
the sperit quickeneth: that is goostli vnderstondyng of ceremonyes
and sacrifices of Moises lawe quekeneth men of rigt bileue, that
now in stede of bodeli circumsisioun takyn baptym taugt and
comaundid of Crist, and in stede of sacrifices of bestis in the elde
1 loh. xvi. 13. 2 I joh. ii. 27. * reprovable.

II] WHAT THE LETTER SLAYETH MEANS 453

lawe takyn now Crist and his passioun and hopyn to be sawid
therbi with his mercy and here owene good lyuynge. Also the
lettere of the newe testament sleeth rebel men that lyuen ther
agens custumabli with-outtyn amendyng in this lif ; ffor Crist in
the gospel seith to sich a rebel man, The word wich I haue spoke
schal deme hym, that is dampne hym, in the laste day^. Also God
seith : / schal sle false men and rebel agens my lawe and I schal
make to lywe feithful men that kepyn my lawe. Thanne thoug the
letere sleeth in maner beforseid, it sueth not therfore that the
lettere is fals and harmful to men, as it suith not that God (f. 12)
is fals and harmful in his kynde, thoug he sleeth iustli bi deeth of
bodi and of soule hem that rebellen fynaly agens his lawe. Also
this sentence, the lettere sleeth, schulde more make aferid proude
clerkis, that vndirstonden the trewthe of Goddis lawe and lyuen
custummabli ther agens, than symple men of witt that litil
vndirstonden the lawe of Crist and bisie hem to lywe weel in
charite to God and man; ffor thise proud clerkis the more thei
cunne Cristis lawe the more they make hem self dampnable for
here hig[h] cunnyng and here wickid lyuynge, and the symple
men for here lytyl cunnyng groundyn hem silf the more in
meknesse, and bisie hem to lerne the wei of saluacioun. Thus
thoug thei haue not tyme and leiser to turne and turne agen the
bokis of Goddis lawe to cunne the lettere therof, thei han and
kepyn the fruit and the veri sentence of al the lawe of God,
thourg kepyng of duble charite, as seynt Austyn seith (f. 126) in
a sermoun of the preisyng of charite ; and of ech symple man the
hooli prophete Dauid seith thus: Blessid is the man whom, lord,
thow hast taugt, and hast enformyd hym ofthi law^, that is charite;
and Deuteronomye it is seid, that a lawe of fier, that is charite,
is in the rigt ho[n]d of God^.

The secunde obiectioun is this : proude clerkis seyn that lewid
men schulden not entirmete of* hooU writ, for in the xix. c. of
Exodi God (f. 13) comaundith vndir peyne of deth that neithir
beeste neither man, (out-takyn ^ Moyses and Aaron) , stie ^ into the
hille where God apperid, and be this hille thei vndirstonden hooH
writ, which no man schulde touche but onU clerkis that ben
vndirstonden by Moises and Aaron. But this lewid obieccion
lettith as wel prestis as lewid men to entirmete of hooli writ,
which they vndirstonden to entre in to the hille, ffor in the same
chapetre aftirward God comondith that prestis schulde not stie
in to the same hille; therfore thei take lieischU and weiwardli
this hille to vndirstonde therbi hooU writ. Ffor God comandith

1 loh. xii. 48. 2 Psal. xciii. 12. ' Deut. xxxiii. 2.

« meddle with. ^ except. • ascend into

454 THE HOLI PROPHETE DA UID SEITH [APP.

[by] Josue c. i., that was duk^ of the peple and of the lenage of
Effraem [that the people] schulde studie both nygt and dai the
lawe of God, and the same charge God gyueth to the kyng in
the xvij. c. of Deuteronomye. Also God seith general! to the
peple of Israel, Exodi xij. that the laue of God be euere in here
mouth, and the wiseman seith, Eccl. vj. to ech man, Al thi
tellyng he in the comaundementis of God, and oure lord Ihesu seith
to hise apostlis. Marc, vltimo. Preche ye the gospel to eueri
creature, that is to euery staat of men, and God comaundith in
Moises lawe that tho bestis that chewe not code be demed
vnclene ; that is that alle thei that tretyn not and thinke not and
speke not of the lawe of God, after that thei han herd it, ben
vnclene bi Goddis doom and vnable to^ blisse. Therfore Dauid
(f . 13 h) seith : I schal blesse the lord in al time: his heriynge ^ schal be
euere in my mouth. It is of fendes weiwardnesse to forbede cristene
men to fede here soulis on Goddis word, ffor God seith Deut."
viij. A man liwith not in bred alone, but in ech word that cometh
forth of Goddis mouth, and the same sentense is confermid bi
Crist Ihesu in the gospel, M* iiij". Thanne sithen Ihesu Crist
ordayneth his word to be sustynaunce of mennys sowlis, it is a
fendis condicion to refreine cristene men fro this goostli mete,
sithen with-outyn it thei mowe not liuen in grace neither comen
to bliss. Also God seith, Amos \dij. / shall send hungyr on the
herthe: not hungir of breed neithir thourst of watir, but to heer the
word of God: as it were a gret cruelte to with-holde bodeli mete
and drynk fro hungri men and thoursti, and tho withholderis
schulde ben gelti of bodeli (f. 14) deeth of the same men, so it is a
moche grettere cruelte to with holde goostli mete, that is Goddis
word, fro cristene men that hungryn and thoursten theraf ter, that
is, desiren it gretli to kunne and to kepe it to teche it othere men
for the staat that thei stonde inne; and thise witholders ben
cursid of God and been sleeris of mennys soulis. Ffor God seith,
Prou. xj°. He that hideth whete shall he cursid among the peple.
But skilefulli^ cristene men reden and stodien hooli writ to
cunne it and kepe it, for Crist seith in the gospel, M* xxijo / have
maad redi my mete, my bolis^ and my volatilis ben slayn and alle
thyngis ben redi: come ye to the weddyngis ; wher on Crisostom
writeth thus: what euere thyng is sougt for helthe of soul, now
al is [ful]fillid in [s]cripturis; he that is vnkunnynge schal fynde
there that he owith to lerne; he that is rebellour and synnere
schal fynde there the scourgis of doom to comynge, which he

^ leader. 2 unfit for. ^ praise. Psal. xxxiii. 2.

* reasonably.

* bulls, Matt. xxii. 4. Both Wyclif&te versions have volatilis, fowls,
through confusion with the correct altilia, fatlings.

Ilj WHY UZZAH WAS SLAIN 455

owith to drede; he that trawailith schal fynde there (f. 146) the
glorie of biheste of euerlastynge Hyf , and while he etith this scrip-
ture, that is bileueth kepith and holdeth in mynde, he schal be
more sterid to good werk ; he that is of litil corage and sike in his
soule schal fynde there mene metis of rigtwisnesse, and thoug
thise mene metis makyn not the soule fat, that is parfit in goostli
lyuynge, natheles tho suffre not the soule to die; he that is of
grett corage and feithful schal fynde there goostli metis of more
continent liyf, that is mor parfit liyf, and thise metis bryngyn
him nig[h] to the kynde of angels; he that [is] smetyn of the
deuil and woundid with synnes schal fynde there medicinable
metis that schullen reparaile him to goostli helthe bi penaunce.
Nothyng faylith in this feste that is nedful to helthe of man-
kynde: that is hooli [sjcripture.

The thridde lewde obieccion is this: Goddis lawe tellith, ij"
Reg. vjo. that Oza the dekene^ was sodeynli slayn by Goddis
veniaunce, for he heeld forth his hond and touchide (f . 15) the arke
of God whanne it was in perel to falle, and by this arke wordli
clerkis vndirstonden hooli writ; thanne sithen this dekene Oza
was slayn of God for he touchide the arke whanne he hadde leyn
with his howne wif in the nygt before, as diuerse doctoris seyn,
moche more lewid men schulden han more weniaunce^ of God if
thei touchyn the arke, that is hooli writ, whanne thei ben in
grettere synnes thanne this dekene was inne. This obieccion of
wordli clerkis is so lewid and so opynli groundid on falshede that
it nedeth noon answere, no but for men of htil vndirstandyng.
It is knowe bi the text of Moises lawe that the dekenes schulde
bere the arke of God on here schulders, as it is writen. Num. vij".,
this dekne hadde this veniaunce for he putte the arke on vn-
resonable bestis to bere it, whanne he (f. 15 b) schulde haue bore it
on his owene schuldres, and not for he lai bi his owene wif in the
nigt bifore. Ffor no text of Goddis lawe nethir ony doctur of
auctorite tellith this cause of hynge bi his wif, as seynt Jerom
and Lire seyn on the same lettere; but this storie that the arke
was put on vnresonable bestis and that the veniaunce of God
cam sodeynli on him that putte it on the bestis figurith this
treuthe : that the hige veniaunce of God schal com on hem that
putten the cure of mennys souHs on flescH foolis and vnkunnynge
of Goddis lawe, and not wilful to trauaile aboutc helthe of mennys
sowlis ; wich cure schulde be put oneh on hooli men and kunnynge
of Goddis lawe, and wilful to performe the goostli cure and en-
sample of Crist and hise apostilis. Ffor as Gregor and Grosted
seyn, to make vnable curatis is the higeste wikkidnesse and
tresun agens (f. 16) God, and is Hke synne as to crucifie Crist.

' deacon. * vengeance.

456 PURVEY'S EPILOGUE ON S. MATTHEW [app.

Therfore not withstondynge thise lewide obieccions, as Crist
strecchid forth hise armes and hise hondes to be nailid on the
cros, and hise leggis and hise feet also, and bowide doun the
heed to schewe what lowe he hadde to mankynde, so alle cristene
peple schulde strechyn forth here armes and hondis and alle
here menbris to enbrace to hem silf the lawe of God thourg veri
bileue and trewe obedience therto, and trewe mayntenaunce
therof to here lyues ende. Ffor Crist seith in the gospel: // a
man knowlechith me he for men, thanne I schal knowleche him
hifor my fader and his angelis. And eft if a man schame me and
myne wordis, I schal schame him bifore the aungelis of God^.

5. Purvey' s Epilogue to his Comment on S. Matthew's

Gospel.

For the date and authorship of this comment or gloss, see supra,
PP- 275-8. The text of the gloss is found in Laud Misc. 235, ff. 263
col. 1-264 b col. I ; Trin. Camb. 36, ff . 7-104, and in Lord Dillon's
MS. ff. 1-264. It has two prologues and this epilogue: one prologue
Purvey embedded in the Gen. Prol. (see supra, p. 281), and the
epilogue largely coincides with one of his set of tracts in defence of
biblical translations (see supra, p. 273).

The prologue Saint Austin saith in the second book of Christian
doctrine (cf. FM, i. viii) occurs in Laud Misc. 235, ff. i col. 1-26
col. I, and as a "prologue to the gospel of Matthew" in a collection
of prologues to the gospels in Harl. 6333 (printed from this MS. in
FM, I. 44-49). The original form of the prologue is probably that of
Laud Misc. 235 {Saint Austin saith. . .abate soon Antechrist's malice,
hypocrisy and tyrantry), where Purvey gave a free translation of
Ticonius' seven rules for the understanding of scripture, as quoted
by S. Augustine in his De Doctrina Christiana, and continued " For
this cause a sinful caitiff, having compassion on lewid men, declareth
the gospel of Matthew to lewid men in English," with complaints
against those who persecuted the Lollards. The first part of the
prologue he paraphrased, and in many sentences copied, when in
writing the Gen. Prol. he had completed his analysis of the biblical
books of the O.T., and explained the traditional four interpretations
of scripture. He was without the books he needed (see Gen. Prol.
FM, I. 48), and therefore recopied his own quotations from the De
Doct. Chris., pp. 44-49, stopping short when the references to S.
Matthew's gospel began. [This prologue and its counterpart in the
Gen. Prol. cannot be independent translations of the De Doct. Chris.,
because the translation is not continuous, and the same lines are
selected for translation in the same order. The prologue could scarcely
have been copied, reversing the order, from the Gen. Prol, because
its verbal quotations from the De Doct. Christ, are more direct: pro-

^ Luc. xii. 8.

II] THE author's reverence FOR OLD DOCTORS 457

logue, " Austin saith thus, ' Be thou ware that thou take not figurative
speech to the letter, for hereto pertaineth the apostle's word, saying,
the letter slayeth, truly the Spirit,' that is, ghostly understanding,
' maketh it to live ' " ; Gen. Prol. " It is to beware in the beginning that
we take not to the letter a figurative speech, for then, as Paul saith,
the letter slayeth, but the spirit, that is, ghostly understanding,
quickeneth," etc. (see FM, i. 44).]

The second prologue {The Holy Ghost saith by the prophet Zachary . . .
and come by God's mercy to the endless bliss of heaven. Jesu king of
mercy, of peace and charity, that sheddest thy precious blood for the love
of men's souls, grant this end. Amen) precedes the text in Trin. Camb.
36, f. 7, and Lord Dillon's MS., f. i b. In the part describing the
writer's method of quotation from holy doctors (Lord Dillon's MS.
f. 7), it is almost a paraphrase of Purvey 's prologue to the gloss on
Luke.

The epilogue, which is here printed from Laud Misc. 235, ff. 263
col. 1-264 b col. I, in this MS. follows the text of the gloss. The
first part describes the use of authorities in the gloss on Matthew;
the last part (not divided by any break) is a lament for the opposition
of antechrist to the preaching of the gospel, and is found among
Purvey's tracts in defence of English scriptures in li. 6. 26, p. 98
(cf. FM. I. xiv).

The MSS. of Purvey's glosses on the other gospels are: S. Mark,
Lord Dillon's MS.; S. Luke, Kh. 2. 9, Bodl. 143, Bodl. 243; S. John,
Bodl. 243, Trin. Camb. 36. For Purvey's pseudonyms in all of them,
see supra, p. 276.

Epilogue, (f. 263, coL i)

Blessyd be almygti God in trynyte : here endith a schort glose
on Matheu, whyche [is] takun of holy docturis, Jerome, Austyn,
Ambrose, Gregori, Crisostom, Bernard, Grosthed, Rabanes, and
othere mo, as is teld in the first prologe^ The writer of this glos
purposide to Goddis onour and helpe of cristen soulis, for to telle
treuly holy writ, and schortly and pleynly the moste profitable
sentence of these byforeseid doctours; and hidurto, blessid be
God of his grete gyfte and graciouse, this pore scribeler is not
gilti in his concience, that he erride fro treuthe of holy writ and
very sentence of these doctouris. If ony lerned man in holy writ
se this glos : dispise he not it without good examinacoun of olde
origynalis of doctouris; for this scribeler hadde trauclid with 2
fals bookis, to see many and chese the beste and clereste sentence
acordynge with holy writ and resoun. If ony lerned man in holy
writ fynde ony defaute in this glos: sette he in the trewe and
cler sentence of holy doctouris ; for this is the grete desire of this
pore scribeler.

1 The writer was thus aware that there were two prologues: see supra.
^ many expunctuated.

458 PURVEY'S epilogue on S. MATTHEW [app.

Wondre not, lernide men, though Rabanes be myche alleggid
in this glos, for he was an old doctur almest of sixe hundrid
yeeris agon, (f. 263, 2) and hadde plente of olde docturrs whiche
he rehersith in his book thoroughout, and in it seith of himself;
and yit he touchith no but pleyn mater, whiche may lightly
be prouyd by holy writ and resoun. Therfore men holden the
sentence profitable and trewe, though he hadde spokun no
word therof ; but we knowen it the betere for his writynge and
declarynge.

We geuen greet credence to these olde holy doctouris, namely
Austyn, Crisostom, lerom, Gregorie, Ambrose and suche olde
seyntis, namely marterid for holy writ, and that for thre causes.
Oo cause, for her oldenesse and holynesse. The secunde cause
is, for her grete kunynge and trauel in holy writ, and so long
approuynge, holy chirche approuynge of her bookis for goode and
trewe. The thridde cause and moste of all is this: for thei
acordiden so myche with holy writ and resoun in spekynge and
lyuynge, and weren euere meke and redy to be amendid, if ony
man coude fynde defaute by holy writ or resoun in her writynge;
and thei chargiden neuere neither constreynede ony man to take
her bookis, but comaundiden men to byleue not to her bokis,
no but in as myche as thei weren groundid in holy writ expresly,
or in pleyn and sufficient resoun. Wherfore seynt Austyn,
souereyneste of oure Latyn docturis, seith on the Ixvi salm, in
the firste vers: If Y seye, no man byleue it; if Crist seith, wo to
him that byleueth not. Eft^ Austyn on the firste pistil of loon,
in the ende, seith thus to his aduersarie: If Y seie, dispise it; if
gospel spekith, be thou war. Eft Austyn in the firste book of the
trynyte seyth thus : Who euer redith (f . 263 b, i) these writyngis,
where he is certeyn with me, go he with me, seke he with me ; where
he knowith his errour, come he agen to me ; where he knowith myn
errour, he agenclepe^ me: so entre we togidere in to the weye of
charite, goynge to him of whom it is seid: seke ye euer the face
of hym. Y haue made this couenaunt pitouse and sikere byfore
youre lord God, with alte hem that reden tho thingis that y
write, and in alle my writyngis, and moste in these in whiche
the unyte of trynete is sought. Also if he that redith my
writyngis undirstondith othere men in that word, in whiche
[he] undirstondith not me: leye he my book asidis, or cast
awey, if it semeth good to him ; and geue he trauel and tyme to
hem that he undirstondith. Also he that redith my writyngis, and
seith: Y undirstonde what is seid, but it is not seid treuly:
afferme he or proue his sentence as it plesith, and reproue he my
sentence, if he may ; if he schal do this with charite and treuthe,

^ again. ^ contradict.

II] S. AUSTIN ON SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY 459

and schal make this knowen to me, if Y dwel in lyif, Y schal
take the most pituouse [sic] fruyt of this my trauel. Also in the
viii booke of the trynyte Austyn seith: Alle the bildyngis or
makyngis of Goddis bookis [ajrisen for [that] feith, hoope and
charite to be bildid in mannes soule. Eft Austyn seith in the
first bok agenes Faustus in xi. c". : The excellence of autorite of
the olde testament and newe, is departid from bokis of latter
men, whiche confermed in tyme of the postlis, by successiouns
or aftercomyngis of bischopis, and bryngynge forth of cristen
chirches, is set hig[h]ely as in sete to whiche alle feithful and
pitouse [sic] undirstondyng (f. 2636, 2) serueth; there if ony thing
myssownynge styre^: it is not leuful to seie. The autour of this
book helde not treuthe, but if he may seie; The bok is fals, or
interpretour or translatour erride. Or thou undirstondist not for-
sothe in litle werkis 2 of lattere men that ben conteyned in bokis
without noumbre, but in no maner euened^ to the alle holyeste
excellence of canoun scripturis, or reulis of holy writ, yhe in
whiche euer of hem the same treuthe is foundun: netheles the
autorite is fer uneuene treuly in these lattere mennes bokis; if
ony thingis in hap ben gessid to discorde fro treuthe, for thei
ben undirstondun as ben seid : netheles the reder or herer hath
there f re demynge * bi whiche ether he approue that that plesith,
or reproue that that offendeth, and therfore alle siche thingis,
no but ^ they be defendid or mayntened by serteyn resoun, or by
the ilke autorite of holy writ, that it be schewid either on alle
maner to be so, or that it mygte be don so: that thing that is
disputid or told there, if it displesith to ony man, or he wole not
bileue: he is not reproued. But in the ilke hignesse of holy
scripturis, yhe of a profete or postle or gospeler is declarid by
the ilke confirmacoun of reule to have set ony thing in his
letteris: it is not leueful to doute that it is soth; elles no book
schal be by whiche the sekeness of mannes ignoraunce schal be
gouerned, if the moste leueful autorite of these bookis either
dispisid be al don aweye, either forbodun^ be confoundid.

A litil byfore (f . 264, i) in the same chapitre Austyn seith : We
ben amonge hem of whiche the postle seith : and if ye undirstondcn
in other maner ony thing, also God schal schewe it to you, whiche
kynde of lettris, that is of latere seyntis is to be red, not with
nede of byleuynge, but with fredom of deniynge; and in the
secunde book, xii. c, many men han writun manye thingis of the
lettris of holy chirche that is not writ not by autorite of reule,
but by sum studie of helpyng or lernynge.

^ arise. ^ in detail the works.

' comparable to. * freedom of judgment.

^ unless. • forbidden.

46o PURVEY'S epilogue on S. MATTHEW [app.

Also Austyn seith thus, and the comyn lawe rehersith him in
thre maner. Y gene this onour to holy writ, that I dar not seie
that ony of tho autours erride in writynge; if Y fynde in tho
bokis ony thing contrary to treuthe: Y dar seie noon other
thinge, than that the bok is fals, either the translatour erride,
or Y undirstonde not it. Y rede so other writeris or expositouris,
that hou greet euer holynesse or doctryn they hau, not therfore
Y gesse it to be sothe, for thei feeliden or undirstonden so, but
for thei mygten proue to me by other autours, that is, of holy
writ, either by resoun of reule ether probable that it is soth, that
thei seyen. Al this seith Austyn.

Also seynt lerome on the secunde c. of lonas the profete seith
thus : Y undirstonde this, that Crist schal be thre dayes and thre
nygtis in the herte of erthe, that a part of the firste day be takun
for al the day, and the Saterday hole and the first part of the
Sunday for al the Sunday. If ony man betere interprete the mys-
tries of this letter, sue thou his sentence. Eft lerome on xxiii. c.
of Mattheu: For [that] this seiynge hath not autorite (f. 264, 2)
of holy scripture, it is dispisid.

A[h]i dere God, lord of treuthe, my litle wit sufhsith not for
to wondre on the blyndenesse and pride of sum prestis, whiche
constreynen^ cristen men for to byleue to her lawes, statutis and
customes by peynes of dampnacioun, as they feynen, and by
bodily peynes, thorou blyndenesse of cristen kyngis and lordis,
whanne cristen men knowen not the ground of these lawis,
nether in holy writ, nether in resoun; but thei semen ag^enes
Cristis techyng and lyuyng^ and his postlis, and brougt yn for
pride and coueitise of worldly* prestis, for to charge more the
puple ^ in cost than Crist and his apostlis ordeyneden.

Alas ! gode Ihesu, louer and sauyour of ^ mennes soules : whi
ben ' newe statutis of worldly* prestis magnefied aboue thyn holy
gospel, confermed with^ preschous blood and treuthe of thi
godhed?

Alas ! gode spouse of cristen soulis, Ihesu Crist ^: whi forsakest
thou so myche thi puple, that sinful mennes ordenaunce ben
openly taugt and maytened by worldly* prestis and her f au-
tours^'': and thyn ordenaunce, of wilful pouerte and greet ^^

^ The principal variants henceforth given from this tract as in li. 6. 28,
pp. 98 ff. 2 contrarion.

* P. 105. And thei that wolden brynge yn agen this lord thi best ordi-
naunce: been slaundred pursued cursed and prisond. And peyned to the
deeth of bodi.

* prelates and. ^ pepel, throughout. « of feithful.
' ben these. * with thin.

' A few lines extra : sin hath great maistry, etc. i" mainteneris.

^1 grettistn.

II] YOU ARE ROBBED OF GOD'S WORD 461

mekenesse of clerkis, and continue!^ ocupacioun of hem in
studiynge and techyng holy writ, is dispisid and holdun errour,
and they holdun cursid and foreprisoned that wolden brynge
agen thi beeste ordenaunce?

Alas, alas, alas! ye cristen puple, whi suffre ye worldly ^
prestis to robbe^ you of Goddis word, sustenaunce for youre
soules, and of your worldly goodis * by vertu of deed leed or rotun
wex, getun^ thorou symonye^? be ye war, for Crist seith, if the
blynde ledith the blynde : they boihe fallen in to lake'': and certis, ye
schulen not be excusid by ignoraunce ® of Goddis (f. 2646, i) lawe,
for ye mygten kunne ^ it if ye wolden seke it of godly disyre, and
good lyuynge after kyndely^" resoun writun of God in youre
soulis; and as bisily seke it of trewe prestis, as ye seken worldly
goodis of worldly men. Therfore eche cristen man and woman
bisie hym in all his mygtis to lerne and kepe Goddis heestis ^^,
to ocupye his wittis in spekynge^^ of Cristis gospel, for therynne
is all comfort and sikirnesse of cristen soulis, for to come to the
bhsse of heuen. Crist Ihesu, kyng of mercy, wysdom and charite:
make thi puple to knowe verily and kepe feithfuly thyn holy
gospel: and to caste awey antecristis errours, and veyn bondis
that tarieth many men fro feith and charite, and cumbren
many men in endeles dispeyr^^.

6. Purvey' s Sixteen Points.

Purvey's authorship of this tract may be assumed from (a) its
following immediately Purvey's Agens hem that seyn that hooli writ
schulde not or may not he drawun in to Engliche, in the unique MS.
Trin. 333, ff. 30 6-34. The tracts are by the same scribe, and would
appear to have been copied by him from the same MS. [b) The
noticeably moderate and scholarly character of the articles, combined
with the late date of post 1400, strongly suggest it. The moderation
is seen by comparison with an earlier Lollard tract of the same sort,
in which Twenty-five points axe discussed, These bene the poyntus that
worldely prelates at tho suggestione of freres putten on {impute to) pore
Cristen men, and what thai graunten ande what thai denyen, printed
Set. Eng. Works, iii. 454-96. These were circulated in 1388-89 (see
id. 454), and while explaining the Lollard pcsition, did not attempt

1 fruytful. 2 prelates and.

' bereve. * and oure this thei spoilen you of.

» dead lead or rotten wax, gotten. « extra words.

7 ditch. 8 unkunning. " knowe.

i« natural. " commandments.

1- longer spekynge.

13 li. 6. 26, p. 102, after endless despair, has Jhesu mercy! Jhesu helpe!
for now is tyme of nede : as gret as euer was fro the bigynnynge of the world
unto this tyme. Amen.

462 PURVEY'S SIXTEEN POINTS [app.

to minimise or split hairs, as the Sixteen Points do. The traces of
north-midland dialect in the Twenty-five points (gafe ; dos, sais) would
not support Purvey 's authorship of that tract: but the southern
dialect of the Sixteen Points is consistent with it. (c) The attitude of
compromise adopted throughout the tract, and the greater modera-
tion than that of the General Prologue, would well suit a Lollard
leader who had persuaded his conscience to a recantation, like Purvey:
and exactly fits Thorpe's description of Purvey in 1407 as "neither
hot nor cold" (see supra, p. 285).

Thes hen the poyntis wiche hen putte he hishcoppis ordinares
vpon men, which thei clepen Lollardis. (f. 306)

The ffirst, the brede or the oost^ in the auter sacrid of the
prest it is very Goddis body: but it is the same bred in kynde
that it was before. The secunde that schrift of mouthe is not
nedeful to helthe of soule, but only sorowe of hert doth awey
euery synne. The thred that no man is holdoun to tithe in
manere nowe vsed of the chirche but such tithis and ofiringes
be 2 the lawe of God schuld be deled to the pore nedi men. The
fourte that ther is no pope, nether was any sith the tyme of seint
Peter the pope. The fhfte that neither bischoppis neither popis
curs byndith any man not but him that is ffirst cursed of God.
The sexte that neither pope nether bischoppe may graunt any
pardoun, but the lest prest hath as myche power to graunte
suche pardoune as the pope. The seuent that ther schulde be
bot 00^ degre aloone of prestehod in the chirche of God, and
euery good man is a prest and hath power to preche the worde
of God. The eigte that neither the pope may make lawes, neither
bischopis constitucouns, and that no man is holden to kepe suche
lawes and constituciouns made be bischopis or popis. The
nynthe is that it is agens the lawe of God that bischopis and
other prelatis of the chirche schulden haue temporal possessions,
for by Goddis lawe thei schulden go oon fote preching the worde
of God. The tente that is that prestis weren not ordeyned to
sey massis or mateynes, but onli to teche and preche the worde
of God. The eleventhe that it is not leful (f. 31) to preye to seint
Marie neither seientis seying the latanye^ or other orisouns, but
onli to God men owen ^ to preie. The tuelfthe that neither crosse
ne ymages peynted or grauen in the worschip of God or any other
seyntes in the chirche schuld be worschipid, and thoug a man
sauye ^ before him the same crosse were on Crist sufferred deth
he schulde not worschipe it, ffor as it is seid al that worschipen
the crosse or ymages ben cursed and done mawmentri'. The

^ host. 2 i^y 3 one.

* litany. » ought. « saw.

' idolatry.

II] EACH BOTH TRUE AND FALSE 463

thrittenete it [is] not medeful neither leueful to go on pilgrimage.
The ffourtenete that it is not leueful to sustene ligttis in the
chirche before the crucifix, neither before any other ymages.
The ffiftenete that it is not leueful to sle any man neither in
dome^ neither ougt of dome, neither Sarsines^ neither paynemes
be batel as knyttes done, wane thei asailen the hooli londe, for
it is seide in the Gospel that thou schalt not sle. The sixtenete
that exorsismes don in the chirche as halowing of the watur,
brede, and salt and askis^ and such other ben pure craft of
nigromancie wiche is the worschiping of the fende.

Who euer schal see thes sixtene poyntes be he wele ware that
in eueriche of hem is hidde trewthe and falsehed, and who that
euer grantith al, grauntith myche falsehede, and who that euer
denyeth al, denyeth many trewthes. Therfore witte wel this,
that wane a coupulatif * is madde, thoug ther be many trewthes,
if it afferme a falshed it schal be denyed altogidur: falsenes is
so venemus. Trewe cristen men schulden answere here avise-
liche, trewliche, and mekeliche to the poyntis and articulis that
ben put agens hem. Aviseliche that thei speike not vnkonnyng-
liche, trwliche that thei speike not falseliche, and mekeliche
that thei speike not prowdeliche in her answere, and than schalt
be grace in ther speiking or answering be the helpe of Crist, (f . 31 6)
Ffor cristen men schulden beleue that sacrament on the auter
is verrely Cristis body sacramentli and spirituali and mo other
maners than any erthely man can telle amonge vs, ffor Crist
that mai not lye seid schewyng the bred that he helde in his
hande : This is my hodi; and therfore seith Jerom in his epistile
to Elbedie: Here we: the brede that Crist brack and gaf to his
discipulis to ete was his owne bodi, for he seide. This is my body:
and so be oure beleue it is both Cristis bodi and bred of lyfe,
and so God forbede that we schulde seie that this blessid sacra-
ment were but breed, for that were an heresye, as to sey that
Crist is man and not god. But we seyn that it is bothe brede
and Cristis body, rigt as Crist is both God and man, as seint
Austin seith; and seint Hillari seith, the bodi of Crist that is
taken of the auter is figure, sith bred and wyne ben seen with-
ougt-forthe ^, and it is verri trewthe, sith Cristis body and his
blood is beleued withinne f orthe : hec ibi ^

Also we graunteyn that schrifte of mouthe is ncdcful to al
suche that ben counselid of God for to make it mekeliche. But
yut very contricoun is more nedeful, ffor whi? withougten schirft
of mouthe may a syneful man be saued in many a caas. But

1 judgment. ^ Saracens.

* ashes. * copulative.

5 outwardly. * I.e. "here ends my quotation."

464 purvey's sixteen points [app.

withougten veri contricioun of herte, mai no syneful man of
discrecioun be saued. Therfore seith the comyn lawe, as autorite
witnesses, the wylle of a man is rewarded, not the werke. Will
is in contricoun of hert and werke is in scrifte of mouthe, therfore
it is certeyn clerer thane ligt, that synnes ben forgeuen be con-
tricioun of hert : hec ibi. Therfore very contricioun is the essencial
parte of penance and confecioun of mouthe is the accidental
parte, but natheles confessioun of hert (f. 32) done to the hige
prest Crist is as nedeful as contricoun.

Also we graunten that men ben holden and boundoun be the
boonde of manis lawe and counsel, not contrarie to goddis lawe,
to paie tithus and offrynges to curatis in al trewe manere nowe
vsed, for that ende that curatis do ther office as God hath
comanded hem; and if thei lyuen as curatis schulden, and
spenden the goodis of the chirche to Goddis worschippe in hem
self and other pore puple, thane ben the tithus paied to the pore
men and nedi, for thei hem self ben pore.

Also we beleuen that our lord Ihesu Crist was and is cheffe
bischoppe of his chirche, as seint Peter seith, and schal be vnto
the dai of dome ; and we supposen that ther han ben many hooli
faderris popis sithen seint Petrus tyme, thoug this name pope
be not seid in Goddis lawe: as seint Clement, seint Clete^, and
other many moo. And so we graunten that the pope of Rome
schulde next folowe Crist and seint Peter in maner of lyuynge,
and if he do so he is worthily pope, and if he contrarie hem
moost of al other, he is most anticrist.

Also we graunten that neither bischoppis curse ne popis
bynden any man anemptis ^ God, but if that bonde acorde with
the bonde of God : and if a man is vnrigtfuly cursed of the pope
or of the bischope, for Goddis cause, if he suffer it pacientli, he
schal fare myche the better for the curse: and thei that cursen
schuUen fare myche the wers. Ffor as seint Austin seith, I seie
not this f oole hardih : that if any man is cursed wrongf ulliche it
schal harme hym rather that curseth thane him that sufferith
this curse, ffor the Hooly Goost puttith no such peyne of curse
to any man vnderserued.

Also we graunten that bothe the pope (f . 32 h) and bischoppis
moun 3 lef ully and medefully ^ graunte such pardouns and indul-
gence as ben grunded in hooli write and that in thre maners. Oon
is that thei moun bi ther office denounce or schewe the wille of
God houg he forgeueth synne, and that trewe denounsi[n]g is
forgiuyng be ther office of presthode. In the secunde maner thei

1 Clement and Cletus, both early popes whose names occur in the canon
of the mass. ^ with regard to.

3 may. * lawfully and profitably.

II] PURVEY DISTINGUISHES 465

moun forgeue and relese penance folily^ enioyned to men, and
foly avowes^ and boondis that men haue bounden hem self with,
and that is clepid indulgence or dispensacioun. And in the
thridde maner thei moun [forgeue] trespas that men han doun
agens hem in as myche as lith in hem, and so it is vndurstanden
that Crist seith in the gospel : Forgeueth, and it schal be forgiuen
to yow, and thus what euer synnes they schuUen forgiue, thei
ben forgeuen, and what euer thei lo[o]sen vpon the erthe it
schal be losed in heuene. Netherles [the] sale [of] pardouns that
smacchen^ symonye maketh bothe the graunter and hym that
bieth it acursed of God.

Also we graunten that the state of prestis schulden be oon in
very vnite, and the order is al oon as anempte the substance,
both in the pope and bischopis and symple prestes. But the
degrees in hem ben diuerse, both heier and lower. And as God
hath graunted hem the keies of power and knouyng of his lawe,
so al prestes of office * han euene ^ power of ordere of presthode.
But summe passen other in power of iurisdiccioun and in ex-
cellence of the keies, kunnynge, and thoug lewde men ben good
lyueris and wise men, yit ben thei not prestes of office, ne thei
be not bounden to preche of office: al be yit that thei be prestes
spirituali, as seith Crisostom and Lyncolne, and so thei mayteche
ther wyfes, ther children and ther seruantis to be of good maners.

Also we graunten that popis mown medefully make lawes and
(f. 33) decres, and bischoppis constituciouns, and kings statutis,
so that thilke lawes and ordinaunce further men to kepe the lawe
of God: and than men ben holden to kepe hem, and if thei make
any lawes contrarie to Cristis lawe, men ben as grettly bounden
to agenstande thoo wicked lawes as thei ben bounden to keep
ther good lawes ; and therfore seith God be Ezechiel the prophete :
Nil ye go ® in the comaundements of your fader s, neither kepe ye ther
doomys, neither be ye defouled in her mawmentis. But kepith my
mandementis and my lawes and my domes.

Also we granten that bischoppis acordyngly with Goddis lawe
mown haue temporal goodis and possessiouns in rcsunable
mesure, so that thei spenden hem as goddis awmyners ', and not
holding hem as wordely ^ lordes : ffor Crist seith in the gospel : Ye
schullen not haue lordschipis as lordes and kynges of the puple ^,
and seint Peter seith : Be ye not hauynge lordschipe in the clergye^^;
and so thoug boschoppis ride or go, so thei do wel ther office thei
ben excused.

1 foolishly.

'^ vows.

' smack of.

* ex officio.

* equal.

* Walk ye not.

Ezek. XX. 18.

' almoners.

* worldly.

» Cf. Marc. x. 42.

" I Pet. V 3

D. W. B. 30

466 PURVEY'S SIXTEEN POINTS [apP.

Also we graunten that prestes weren ordeyned of Crist to teche
and preche the puple, and not onH that but also to preie and to
mynyster the sacramentis of God and lyue wille; and of goode
ordinaunce of hooli chirche thei ben ordeyned be men to seie
bothe matynes and messis, in wiche ben conteyned gospellis and
pistillis and other bokis of hooly wrigte, for that ende that thei
schulden aftur ther redinge declare it to the puple in ther modur
tounge. Ffor seint Poule seith : / wole that alle prestes speike with
langages, as ben orisouns and lessouns in Latyn, But more I wole
that thei preche^.

Also we graunten that it is both leueful and medeful to preie
to oure lady and to alle halownus ^, so that the entent of oure
preiour be do principally to Goddis worschipe. And in oure
preiour we schulden not thenke that our lady or other seyntis
mown graunte any (f. 336) thing of hem self. But thei knowen
Goddis wille and preien that it be fully don and so ther preier is
herde. And so the letanye is rigt good and it be wel vsed. But
wane prestis or religious singen the latanye for pride, for ipocrisie,
or for couaitise, than thei plesen not God but the fende and the
worlde, wiche ben the maistris that thei seruen.

Also we beleuen that neither the crosse that Crist was don
vpon, neither any other Roode or ymage maad of mannys hand,
schulde be worschipid as God ne as resonabel creaturis. ffor wo
so euer worschipith hem so doth mawmentrie and is cursed.
But natheles the making of ymages trewly peyntid is leueful,
and men mowen leuefuliche worschippe hem in sum manere as
signes or tokones; and that worschipe men done to hem, if thei
louen hem and vsen hem to that ende that thei ben ordeyned
fore, (as clerkis don her bokis), dispising the avowes, preiers and
sacrifice and misbeleues vnlawfully don to hem.

Also we graunten that it is leueful and medeful to go on
pilgrimage to heuen warde doing werkes of penance, werkis of
rigtfulnes, and werkis of mercy, and to suche pilgrimage alien
men ben boundun after ther power wile thei lyuen here, ffor the
prophete seith in the sawter booke : Lorde, be thow not stille, for
I am a straunger and a pilgrime as alle my fadris weren ^. Suche
pilgrimage may we wel do without scheching^ of dede ymages
and of schrynes.

Also we graunten that it is leueful in mesure [to have] ligttis
before ymages and holde torchis before the auter so that it be
doune principally for the worschip of God and not to the ymages,
and other werkis of rigtwissenes and of mercy to be not left
therfore; ffor Crisostom seith thei that honouren chirchis don a

* I Cor. xiv. 5. ^ saints.

' Psal. xxxviii. 13. * seeking.

II] HOW FAR EACH IS LAWFUL 467

goode werke if thei kepine other werkis of rigtfulnes. But men
schulden as wel (f . 34) sette suche ligte in the chirche thoug the
ymages weren aweye, as thoug thei weren there, or elhs the
loue that thei gyuen ymages smacchen mawmentrie.

Also we graunten that it is leueful to sle men in dome and in
bateUis, if tho that doun it han autorite and leue of God, and if
thei sleen any man Cristen or hethen agens the autorite of God
thei ben acursed and breken the comaundement of Good, and so
it is like that fewe or none ben nowe slayne be the autorite of
God.

Also we graunten that halow^ng of holy watur, of brede, salt,
and asken ben leueful, for thei ben deuougte preiers and blessings
and ther is noon exorsisioun don on holibred but a preier as good
as our gracis ; and not alle exorsisiouns ben craft of nigramancye
and worchinge of the fende, ffor Crist and his apostilis vseden
the office of an exorciste in casting ougt of fendes to mannys
saluacoun. Natheles tho that setten her bileue that euery drope
of hooli watur doth awey a synne, and taketh none heede how
hali watur is a token that we haue euer more nede of repentance
in hooly chirche alle the wile we lyuen, ben foule bigiUd.

^o — 2

INDEX

Titles of treatises, etc., are given under the author's surname, where known;
religious houses under the order to which they belonged.

Aachen, 91

Abbey of the Holy Ghost, 199, 217-8

Abbotsbury, books, 138 n.

Abcdarius, 115 n.

Abelard, 41 4 n.

Abingdon, books of, 170; abbot

Faritius, 170
Ad apostolatus, 86-8, 94 «.
Aelfric, of Bath, 134, 6

of Eynsham, 136-9, 150)1., 4

Aethelwold, 135

Africh, Thomas, 368

Agnes, sister of Leonfrin, 221

Aidan, S., 133

Ailly, Pierre d', 104

Alanus de Insula. See LTsle, Alain de

Albans, S., synod of 1426, 148 «.,

327-8; books of, 169; learning of

monks, 330-1; abbots, 169, 327;

hermit of, 341
Albigensians, 42, 387
Aldhelm, S., 22
Aldsworth, Robert, 170, 220 w.
Alexander III, 26, 183
Alexander V, 103, 399-400
Alexander VI, 126
Alfred and translations, 132, 4-6,

441-2
Aline, in French verse gospels.

249-50
Alkerton, 292

Alphabetum Narrationum, 200-1
Alphonso the Wise, 53
Ambrose, S., 457-8
Amsterdam, 116
Ancren Riwle, 6gn., 207 m.
Andreas, Johannes, 34«., 179*1.
Anselm, S., 175
Aquinas, 175, 334; Catena Aurea,

175, 7, 271, 6-7, 28on. ; In libros

Politicoriim expositio, 442
Aragon, 34«., 48-54
Arialdus, 41
Aristotle, 53, 133, 168 «.; Ethics,

403; Rhetoric, 405
Arius, 385

Armachan. See FitzRalph
Arnauld, Antoine, 104 n., 383-4
Arnold, of Brescia, 414 w.; abbot of

Dyckeninghe, 90-2

Arundel, archbishop, prohibitions,
3, 55, 132, 231, 250, 268, 295-9,
319-21, 371, 399-400: and Wy-
cliffe, 229, 238-40, 311; and
Nottingham's compendium, 177;
and Thorpe, 228, 289, 353-5, 438;
and Payne, 292; and Purvey,
267 M., 278-80, 285, 289-97, 445'
and anti-translation bill, 282-3;
and Nicholas Love, 320-6

Asaph's, S., bishop of, 360

Ashford, Agnes, 369

Richard, 368

Aston, John, 231 «., 5-6, 276, 377,

445

Augsburg, David of, 29 m., 63, 7n.,
88

Augustine, S., 41, 75, 93, 102, 115,
138 M., 173, 5, 245, 265, 279n.,
448, 455-60, 464; De consensu
Evangeliorum, 176, 265; Of Chris-
tian Doctrine, 91, r8i, 281, 456;
"rule" of, 386; Enarrationes in
psalmos, 403; De Moribus Ec-
clesiae Catholicae, 401-2; Epis-
tolae, 402-4, 6, 8, 444, 45^;
Dialectica, 404; Super Genesim,
406; Super lohannem, 417; De
Sermone Domini in monte, 433

Aureoh, Peter, Compendium, 178

Aurora, 170, 9

Austin friars, 97, 119. 164 n.;
canons, 100, 149, 151, 204, 305,

343
Auxerre, William of, 411 «.
Awdley, John, 342; Concilium Con-

scientiae, 397
Ayala, Perez de, 383
Ayenbite of Inwyt, 204, 214
Ayleward, William, 363

Backster, Margery, 357-8
Bacon, Roger, 163-8
Badby, John, 356
Baggeley, Thomas, 356 n.
Baile, John, 363
Baker, John, 357, 368

Richard, 356

Bale, bishop, 284 n., 287 n., 302,
376. 399

470

INDEX

Bale, 80, 120, 8; council of, 82, 359;

synod of 1503, 127M.; Nicholas

of, 76, 8-9, 120; plenary, 129;

Dance of Death, 143
Barbara, S., 11 5 n.
Barberino, Francesco da, 22 n.
Barking, books of, 173; nunnery of,

331 w., 6-9
Barlaam and Josaphat, 392
Baron, John, 363, 4
Barre, Richard, 178 w.
Barret, John and Joan, 367
Bartlet, Robert, 369
Bate, William, 358
Bath abbey, books, 137-8, 169,

185
Bau, John, 91 n.
Baxter, Richard, 356
Beauchamp, Elizabeth, 341
Beaufort, cardinal, 366
Beauvais, Ralph of, 163
Vincent of, 171; Speculum

Historiale, 72, 171, 8; as Spiegel

Historiael, 72-4; as Storial Mirror ,

224
Beckington, bishop, 357
Bede, ven., his biblical translations,

13. 132-3. 250; other works, 135,

8 m., 175, 439, 441; Butler on,

406; Palmer on, 419, 429, 435;

Purvey on, 442
Bedeman, Lawrence, 236
Bedford, duke of, 154; archdeacon

of, 185
Befusis, friar, 292
Beguines (Beghards), 49, 52, 58-60,

69-71. 75. 81-4, 89, 91, loi, 4,

lion., 122, 144 M., 373
Beleth, John, 24-5
Bell, Stephen, 232, 7, 377
Bellarmine, cardinal, 383
Belward, Nicholas, 358

Richard, 356, 8

Benedict, S., rule of, 386; translated,

135. 7«-
Benedictines, 44, 76, 8, 119, 141 w.,

214
Berengarius of Tours, 82, 423, 430
Berkeley, lord Thomas of, 131, 145,

299-302
Bernard, S., 60, 115W., 279 w., 290,

414, 448, 457; translation of

sermons, 204
Bertram, John, 125-6
Besan9on, 176; Etienne de, 200
Beynop, Ghysbert, ii6n.
Beziers, synod of 1246, 36, 8-9; sy-
nod of 1299, 81
Bible, 4, yn., 13-15; Septuagint,

389, 401, 429, 441; Paris Sta-

tioners', 20; Eastern Church and,
23-4, 134, 9; early printed:
Italian, 44, German, 44 w., 59,
117-26, 128-30, Spanish, 44M.,
Dutch, 121, English, 326, 348;
burned, 5, 60, 261, 399-401; bill
against English, 282, 294, 444;
in rhyme: Spanish, 54, Latin,
170-1, 178-81; fourfold interpre-
tation of, 27, 46, 63, 84 M., 125 w.,
164-8, 181-2, 242, 256, 288;
literal interpretation of, 105 m.,
165-8, 286, 447; interpretation by
reason (Pecock), 361-2; as God's
law, 226-31, 255-6, 264-5, 270, 3,
282, 5, 296-7, 358, 367 n., 399,
445. 451. 5-6, 464; prohibition of
translations, 24, 7, 31-3, 36-8,
48-52, 60-4, 71, 3, 84-8, 104-5,
131, 294-7, 327. 351-73. 387-8;
misquotation of, 180-1; reading
of O. Test., 255-6, 263 M., 387;
of Epistles, 99, 383. See also
Refectory reading; Plenaries;
Textus
Bible, Vulgate, ability to read, 2,
156-74. 162-3, 220-4, 442; study
of, 174, 181-7, 332; foundation of
translations, 43, 53, 118, 120,
225-51, 268, 372, 442; thirteenth
century Paris, 65; used for medi-
tation, 76; corrected text of, 99,
165, 170, 181, 259

non-English translations of:

Arab, 93, 389; Armenian, 93, 142;
Bohemian, 108; Chaldean, 93,
389, 419; Czech, 248; Dutch,
69-74, 90-6, 114, 249, 294, 388,
441 ; Egyptian, 93, 389; Ethiopian,
389; French, 17, 19^., 20, 25-8,
30-40, 65-6, 105, 178, 388, 419,
441 (Anglo-French), 142-3, 204,
221, 248-9, 332, 378, 392-7;
German, 15, 19K., 20, 58-68,
79-81, 85-8, 93, 106-30, 248,
388, 441; Greek, 120, 142 w.,
297 n., 300, 419-20, 435, 7, 441, 3;
Hebrew, 53, 85, 108, 14272.,
167-8, 419-20, 435, 7; Italian, 7,
15, ign., 41-8, 142W., 298, 388;
Persian, 389; Scandinavian, ign.,
20, 120; Slavonic, 20, 93, io8,
139. 372; Spanish, 19 m., 34^.,
48-55. 388-9, 441; Syrian, 93

English translations of, 1-17;

before Wycliffe, prose, 130-46,
173, 204, 238, 250-1, 294, 371-3,
verse, 146-55; contemporary with
Wycliffe, prose, 298-318; Biblical
Version, A. C. Panes, 304-15

INDEX

47 r

Bible, Wyclifl&te or Lollard. First
(early) version, 145, 252-5, 8-9,
262, 270-1, 280, 6-8, 300W.,
305-6, 310-5, 333, 445. Second
(later) version, 252-67, 280-1,
350, 356-70. 376, 445. date of,
376, 381. General Prologue, 254-
67, 271, 4, 6-7, 280-1, 3, 300, 9,

334-5. 340 «•. 365-6. 369-70.
374-81, 400, 456, 462; also, 4,
7«., 13-15, 20. See also Wycliffe;
Hereford; Purvey

books of. Old Testament :

Psalter, 19, 26-7, 31, 4M., 43, 4,
52, 4, 65, 71, 86, 99, 100, 136,
169-71, 221-2, 8, 354; as reading
book, 190; German, 112, 129 w.,
130; Anglo-French, 142-3, 5, 6n.,
173, 187, 22i; English, 132M., 4,
6, 7, 140, 3-7, 173, 221, 310, 337,
371, 392-7; Eleanor Hull's, 341;
verse, 147, i73«., 321. See also
Miigeln; Rolle. Wisdom books,
German, ii6«. Other O. Test,
books, translations, 1 1 7-20, 1 35-8,
140, 152, 255-6, 272, 331, 359,
368. Apocryphal books of, Eng-
lish, 338. New Testament: Gos-
pels. Saxon gospel books, 138-9;
rhymed French, 149-51, rhymed
English, 224; Tuscan, 43,67^., 298;
owners of, 3M., 221; apocryphal,
140, 8n., 151-2, 154-5, 174. 210,
224. See also Northern Homily Col-
lection; Lollards; Purvey. Gospels,
north midland glossed, 189^., 254,
262 «., 279, 288, 299, 305, 310-5;
midland S. Matthew, 305-15;
with homilies, 315-8. Gospel
harmony, 55 w.; Latin, 174-81;
English, 47, 148-54, 322-6, 392-7;
Proven9al, 27«.; Italian, 47;
Dutch, 3n., 47, 97, loi, 115;
German, 47, 79, 112; Spanish, 47,
55. Gospel, translation of, at
mass, 17, 25, 39 w., 126-30, 9, 176,
199, 212-3, 246M., 272, 285, 300,
343, 8; in 1538, 348-50, 373.
Acts. English, 135, 7; midland,
305-15; Lollard, 368. Epistles.
Dutch, 98-100, 115, 305; German,
129K., 130; English, 249, 305-15,
363, 6, 8-9. Apocalypse. Dutch,
116; German, 130; French, 142-3,
185, 221, 30X, 314*2., Middle-
English, 143, 302-3, 371 ; Latin,
178; Lollard, 363, 6, 8-9

licences to read, i, yn., 8, 11,

Bible, translations of, learned by
heart, 2; by Waldensians, 26, 8,
gn., 38, 62-3, 70M., 352; by
Lollards, 280, 352-3, 362-9; by
orthodox in 1538, 350

owners: English, 164, 173,

185, 6, 288, 331-6, 8, 342-3
(Lollards), 352-73, 391-8; Vul-
gates, 332, 391-8; French, 173-4,
185-6, 278, 391-8; individuals,
169-72, 181-7, 203-4; Vulgates
in libraries of communities, 115,
168-73. See also Nunneries

reading, by clerks, 16, 21, 49,

99, 119, 134, 156-204, 230; by
laity, I, 2, II, 12, 16-22, 25-8,
31-3, 49-51, 72, 97, 116, 121, 6,
205-24, 7, 230, 261, 300; en-
couraged by heretics, 5, 14, 22,
25-43. 59. 61-3, 71, 9, 225-97,
304; encouraged by orthodox for
laity, 4, 8, 10, 11, 21, 4, 56, 72,
79-80, 89-96, 8n., 121, 187,
219-20, 319-20, 348, 351-73; con-
demned by orthodox for laity, 2,
4, 5, 8, iiM., 12, 17-27, 31-41,
45. 50-3. 71-5. 80, 83-8, 97.
102-9, n8-2i, 125, 150, 208,
239. 255-6, 288, 290-7, 308, 326,
8-9, 348-50, 382-91

Bible Histnriale. See Comestor

Bocton, John, 170

Boethius, De Disciplina Scolarium,

439
Bogomil, 40«., 2
Bohemia, 64, 122, 240, 359, 400

Anne of, 20, 248; and

Purvey's glosses, 278-81; funeral
sermon, 278-9, 281, 2«., 294, 444
Vratislaus of, 23-4

12, 18-9, 24, 60, 97; Arundel's to
Anne, 279; after 1408, 319-50

Bologna, edict of, 37*?., 54"., 70 w.
Bonaventura, S., 75; Meditationes,

152-3, 174, 6-7, 321-6; other

works, 175, 236
Boniface IX, 375
Bonner, bishop, 350
Borrell, J., 44«-. 8«., 54
Boston fair, 221
Boughton, Joan, 364
Bount, John, 289
Bourbon, Etienne de, 25-7, ^on.,

38-9, 66, 86
Bourne, Robert of, 149, 153 «.;

Handlyng Synne, 204, 215
Bowet, archbishop, 185 h.
Brampton, friar, 147, 320-1
Brandt, Sebastian, 108-9; Ship of

Fools, 108
Brantyngham, 159-60, 185H., 221 n.
Brethren of the Common Life, 21 m..

472

INDEX

59-60, 69, 71, 89-95, 97-103.
lion., 3, 6n.. 122, 342, 5, 373;
Sisters of, now.

Brethren of the Free Spirit. See
FraticeUi

Breviary, i2in., 4W., 178M., 220,
2, 391

Brewster, James, 366

Bridget, S., of Sweden, 120; her
Revelations, 120, 342, 392, 4;
rule, 340 w.

Brightwell, T., 231 w.

Brigittines, at Sion abbey, 7, 116,
331 n., 6, 339-42, 371. determina-
tion at, 418 w.; at Vadstena, 120

Bristol, 221 «., 335. See also Lol-
lards

Britwold, ^n.

Broully, John de, 383

Brown, Alice, 367

Brunteshusen, 116

Brute, Walter, 232, 7, 286, 377

Bundere, van der, 383

Burgh, Elizabeth de. 220-1

John de, 202, Pupilla Oculi,

202, 341

Burgundy, Jeanne of, 20
Burton, abbey, books, 137-8

John, 348 w.

Bury S. Edmunds, books, 138, 170
Busch, John, 95 w., 7, 100-3, ii4'

123, 342
Butler, Jenkin, 368

John, 367-8

Richard, 367

Robert, 368

William, friar, 45^., 125 w.;

determines at Oxford, 289-90;
his opinions, 317, 320; his deter-
mination, 399-418

Caedmon, 133, 139-40, 7

Caligula, Louis de, 83

Cambrensis, Giraldus, 163, 172,
183-4, 194-5. 8??.

Cambridge, 159, 164, 172, 5, 193, 7,
202, 297 w.; chancellor of, 215,
297 w.

Canones Evangelistarum, ijq

Canterbury, Christchurch priory,
books, 136, 8, 170, 3, 7, 8n., qn.,
204; S. Augustine's, 138 «., 170,
203; archbishops of, 322, 9, 331,
348-50, 364; diocese of, 358

John, 289

Canterbury Tales, 363
Capua, Victor of, 115M., 176
Carilef, William de, 185
Carmelites, and Bible, 147, 164 «.,

233. 292

Carpenter, Ralph, 368
Carthusians, and Bible, 6, 54-5, 9,

95 w., io6w., 169W., io6n., i6gn.,

181, 233, 383; at Sheen, 7, 263,

325. 331. 5. 371; Witham, 169;

Hinton, 174; Strassburg, 177;

Mount Grace, 322-6
Carver, Robert, 367
Ca.ssia,n's Collations, 115
Castile, 49, 51-3
Castro, Alphonso a, 50-2
Catalan. See Bible, translations,

Spanish
Catalogues, mediaeval, English,

2on., 132-3, 137-9, 164, 168-87;

Spanish, 497^.; German and Dutch,

1 10-17; nunnery, 1 10-17, 341;

written in vernacular, iio-i, 113
Cathari, 26-7, 41-3, 57
Catholicon, 426-7
Caulibus, Johannes de, 152
Cavalca, Domenico, 43-4
Caxton, William, 300-2, 371
Censor's edicts, 124-6; marks, 124
Cestrensis. See Higden
Chaaliz, 153
Chambly, Jean de, 20 «.
Chandos, Richard, 185
Charles IV, Emperor, 81, 3, 5, 91
Charles V, Emperor, 51, 85 w.,

388-9
Charles IV, of France, 20
Charles V, of France, 20, 227, 298
Chartres, Ivo of, 421;?.
Chase, Thomas, 369
Chastising of God's Children, 337-8

342, 392-5
Chaucer, 154, 224, 250
Chedingfold, curate of, 35612., 366,

379
Cheriton, Odo de, 200
Chester, 183 w., 198 w.; Plays, 209-

II, 329
Ranulph of, 300, and see

Higden
Cheyne, Edward, 221 w.
Chichele, archbishop, 29412., 7«.,

329, 356

Chichester, bishop of, 185, 363

Chios, Leonard of, 120

Christes book, 138

Chrysopolitanus, Zachary, 176

Chrysostom, S., 93, 175, 2jgn., 449,
457-8, 465-6; Super Matthaeum,
De opere Imper/erto, 409, 416—7,

433-4. 449
Ciliuni, 202
Cistercians, i8n., 70, 153-4, 236;

abbots, 32, 60; at Rivaulx, 213 w.
Cistrence. See Higden

INDEX

473

Clanvowe, 278
Claxton, friar, 242 n.
Claydon, John, 356
Clemanges, Nicholas de, 105 n.
Clement VI, 211 n.
Clensing of Man's Soul, 397
Clerk, Peter the. See Payne
Cliftord, sir Lewis, 278, 380 m.
Cloud of Unknowing, 77 n.
Cocks, Joan, 367 w.
Cole, Thomas, 357
Collation, 113, I'jzn., 4
Collins, Alice, 368

John, 368

Richard, 368

Robert, 368

Cologne, 33, 59-60, 79, 81, 94: 1398
determination at, iom., 35, 89-98,
114 n., 133, 272, 371-3; 1480
Dutch Bible, 44 w., 54«-, 121, 6,
193; 1479 Latin Bible, 124, 6;
censor's mark, 124 w., 6

Comestor, Peter, 19, 71, 153, 325;
his Historia Scholastica, 18 w., 19,
74, 152, 170, 3, 7-9; compendium
of, 176 w.; as Historia General, 53,
5; as Bible Historiale, 53, 143,
173, 8, 189, 221, 248, 27877.., 319,
329, 331^-. 4; as Rijmbijbel, 71-4,
294; in Dutch prose, 74, 9, 115,
130; in English, 325

Compendious treatise. See Purvey

Compendium. See Aureoli

Confession books, ii5«., 129 m.

Constance, council of, 22, 92, 5, 8,
103, 4, 6w., 313, 373; Dominicans
at, 117, 120

Constantinople, fall of, 120; Em-
peror of, 297 n.

Convents. See Nunneries

Corbeil, Pierre de, 36

Cornwall, John of, 195

Corpus Christi Coll., Cambridge, 186

Courtenay, archbishop, 229, 235-6

Courtesy books, 222

Courteys, friar John, 418 k.

Coventry, 349

Coverdale's Bible, 348

Cranmer, -jn., 12 n., 284, 348-50,

371-2
Craw, Paul, 359
Cricklade, Richard, 151
Croft, sir John, 288
Cromwell, Thomas, 348
Crowd, John, 363
Croxton, books of, 170; abbots of,

170
Crump, Henry, 70;;.
Cum ex injuncto, ion., 34-5, 387-8
Curayn, William, 357

Cursor Mundi, i^'j

Cuthbert, S., 135

Cyril and Methodius, 23, 139

Dalby, Alexander, 198 w.

Dante, 44

Dan vers, lady, 116

Decretals, 9, iom., 24 m., 34-5, 62 m.,
87, 93, 124 «.. 138 «., 372, 414

Decretum of Gratian, 24, 62 w., 87,
414W., 442

Degrees, 162, 192

Deguilleville, Guillaume de, 153-4,
322 «. ; Pilerinage Jhesucrist,
153—4; ^^ ^^ ^^^ Humaine [The
Pilgrim), 154; de I'Ame {Grace
Dieu), 154, 342, 392

De Haeretico Comburendo, 78

Delft, Barbara cloister at, 84 m.,

"3-5. 341

Dereham, Richard, ■zg'^n.

Desmoulins, Guyart, ign., 178

Determinations on vernac. Bibles.
See Colo.gne; Butler; Purvey;
Payne ; Palmer ; Sion

Devenish, John, 357

Deventer, 89-91, 5, loi, 2

Devon, earl of, 221 • .

Dinckelspiihl, Nicholas von, 97 n.

Dirige, 141, 442

Dives and Pauper, 326-7, 342, 5

Divine office, 19, 23

Divitis, loannis. See Le Riche

Doctrine of the herte, 394

Dominicans, and Bible, 174, 5, 8,
184, 7, 191; biblical translations,
19 M., 20, 36-9. 43 n., 4-8. 53-4.
58-60, 5, 70-1, 5-8, 80 n., 3. 94,
8, ioa-2, 4M., 111-3, 7, 9, 121,
133, 291-7, 383; and inquisition,
29 W-. 83, 355; at Cambridge, 164.
294 «., 331; London, 164 n., 235,
287-8, 294-7, 355; Oxford, 175;
Newcastle, 333; Sion, 340K.;
Exeter, 418 w. See also Friends
of God

Doornik, bishop of, 71, 163 «.

Driedo, John, 383

Dunstan, S., 3 n.

Durdant, David, 367

Nicholas, 366-7

Robert, 367

Durham, 149; abbey, books, 137-8,
169M.. 170, 3. 4, jn., gn., 185,
190M., 331

Dymok, Roger, 283, 374

Dyss, Thomas, 294)/.

Eadwine's psalter. 143
Earsham, Bartholomew of, 358

30—5

474

INDEX

Ecclesiae Regimen. See Thirty Seven

Cone.
Eckhart, Meister, 75, 85, g^, 11 1-3,

Tielman, 91 n.

Edgar, king, 169

Edgeworth, Roger, 4

Edmunds, John, 368

Edrich, Stephen, 203

Education, of graduate clerks, 156-

187, 178; of monks and friars,
172, 4; of parish priests, 135, 157,
188-204; of lay people, 205-224,
286. See also Schools

Edward III, 221

Edward VI, 349 w

Egbert, bishop, 135

Eichstadt, 119; synod of, 127 w., 8

Elizabeth, S., of Hungary, 60

S., of Schonau, 81 11.

Elmley, Isabella, 220

Ely, 178 «., books of, 185; diocese

of, 363

Enkhuysen, 115

Enzinas, Francis de, 54)2., 388-9

Erasmus, 5«., 8n., ion., 12, 35«.,
114W., 6n.; and More, 11; and
P. Sutor, 383-6; and Paris Cen-
sures, 387-8; and Wycliffe, Hus,
385; and Cum ex injuncto, 387-8

Erfurt, 79 w.

Espina, Alonzo de, 51

Evesham, books of, 170

Exempla Bibliorum, 17 5 n.

Exeter, bishops of, 184-5, 190, 6,
348-9; ministers of, 202 «.; duke

of, 325

Adam of, 184-5

Kymeric' s Directorium, ion., 34 m.

Farmer, John, 325 m.
Farnylawe, Thomas, 186
Faulfisch, Nicholas, 240, 295 m., 400
Felsted, Robert, 221
Felton, Sibylla, 337
Ferdinand I, Emperor, 389
Ferdinand and Isabella, 50-2
Ferrer, Boniface, 54-5
Fishbourne, Thomas, 294;/., 341
FitzHerbert, Book of Husbandry,

i8t
FitzHugh, 185 w.
Fitz James, 325-6, s6gn.
Fitz Ralph, archbishop of Armagh,

De Quaestionibus Armenorum, 142.

265, 291 «., 334, 443; sermon of,

299^.
Fleming, bishop, 358
Fletcher, Richard, 358
Flora. See Joachim

Foec, Everard, 90-1, 5
Folkhirde, Clement, 240

Formicarius, 82 n.

Foxe, bishop, 358 m., 363 m., 4«.,

9. 374. 437-8

France, Anne de, 22 n.

Francis, S., 115 m.

Franciscans, and Bible, 164-8,
191-3; biblical translations, 43 m.,
4, 51, 311., 411., 5, 8-9, 63, 71, 5,
^ 7, 80, 5, 94, 103, 133, 164, 200,
289-92; rule of, 386; writers,
164 n., 175-8, 184-5; schools, 192,
200; at Oxford, 164, 7, 289-90;
Toulouse, 178; London, 164 n.,
192; York, 192; Norwich, 192;
Stamford, 192; Coventry, 192;
Exeter, 192; Newcastle, 192;
Utrecht (tertiaries), 114. See also
Tertiaries

Fraticelli, 29, 71, 82, 107, 178

Fraiienbuechlein, 129

Frederick III, Emperor, 121

French, spoken in England, 205-6

Freysingen, synod of, 127-8

Friars, and Bible, 43-8, 89, 131,
142 «., 8, 164, 186, 191-2, 232,
240, 3-4, 7-8, 250, 268, 290-7,
378, 399-401 ; and universities,
163-8. See also Schools

Friends of God, 21 m., 40, 2, 59-60,
75-81, 3, 91. 9, III, 8, gn., 118,
122, 187, 218-20, 336, 373

Fritzlar, Hermann of, 79

Froschauer, Christ, 1237/.

Fryskney, Isabella, 186

Fyloll, Jasper, 340 «.

Galilean use, 25, 212-3

Gallopes, Jean, 325

Gardiner, John, 359

Gascoign, Thomas, 233 m., 292,
340 M.

Gasquet, cardinal, views on Wy-
cliffite Bible, iw., 3M., 4M., "jn.,
296 w., 382; on Trevisa, 302 w.

Gaunt, John of, 226, 232, 5, 9,
283-2, 444

Gaytrik, 141, 204, 250, 346, 442

Geffrey, Thomas, 368

Gerson, chancellor, 3M., 47, 92, 8,
103-6, 359, 373, 382; On com-
munion in both kinds, 103;
Against idle curiosity, 105; Decern
consider ationes, 105 w.; De sensu
litterali s. scripturae, 105 «., 359M.

Gesta Romanorum, 200

Gesta Salvatoris, 155

Ghent, 106

Gherytz, Hugh, 130

INDEX

475

Glasgow, archbishop of, 359
Glastonbury abbey, books, 137-8,

170. 3. 9«-
Giffard, bishop, 159 ».
Glosa ordinaria, 34 w., 174, 184;

Interlineai'is, 174, 424
Gloucester, abbey, 151; books of,

170; duchess of, 221 «.; duke of,

278, 288, 335
Goose, John, 364
.Gorham, Geoffrey of, 169

Nicholas, 175, 423, 5, 9

Gospel. See Bible

Gospel of the Infancy, 151, 154-5

Gotray, David, 232 w.

Gottesfreunde. See Friends of God

Gouda, 116 n.

Gower, 224

Grabow, M., 95M., 8

Gradual, 40 w.

Graduates, 158-63, 174, 184; and

preaching, 257 w., 265
Grammar. See Schools
Grandisson, bishop, 185
Gravesend, Richard, 185
Greatham, Robert of, 149-50, 212;

Mirrur, 288, 315-7
Greeks, 297 m., 443
Gregory I, 93, 102, 135, 279 w., 322,

448, 455, 7, 8; Moralium Libri,

411, 422 ».. 4, 430 3'
Gregory VII, 18,7., 23-5, 107 m.,

134. 372

Gregory IX, 9, 35, 60, 87, 93, 384

Gregory XI, 81, 86-8, 94

Grenier, N., 383

Groningen, Gerhard of, gi it.

Groot, Gerard, 69, 89, 94M., 100,
114, 5«., 298

Grosseteste, 69 w., 160, 3, 182, 190,
5-6, 8n., 203, 6, 214, 279M., 454,
7, 465; and friars, 192; sermons,
196; Scriptum est de Levitts, 141,
442; Chasteau d' Amour, 183,
205 n.

Gui, Bernard, 39

Gun, Joan, 368

Gundulph, 3M., 181, 5

Haarlem, nuns of S. Margaret, 115:

of S. Ursula, 116
Hakker, John, 368
Hakon V, 20
Hales, Alexander of, 404
Halliday, William, 368
Hamo, rector of Snaves, 203
Hampole. See Rolle
Handlyng Synne. See Bourne
Hannapis, Nicholas de, 175 n.
Harney, Martin, 104 w., 383-4

Harris, John, 368

Harrowing of Hell, 140, 152, 180,
210

Hastings, Mary, 338

Hawkins, Henry, 332

Hayle, Matilda, 338

Heermann, VVillem, 130

Hegelmaier, T. G., 384

Heidelberg, 124

Heliand, 55 n.

Hem, ii6«.

Hendred, William, 154M.

Henneburg, Bertram, count of, 124

Henricson, John, 98-9

Henry II, 169

Henry IV, 210, 236, 283, 297 »., 335

Henry V, 294 «., 325, 335

Henry VI, 261, 3, 285 m., 331, 5, 360

Henry VII, 335

Hereford, Nicholas, 27 jz. ; at Oxford,
232-6; his translation, 253-5,
259-60, 270, 3oon., 3o8«., 310,
445; completed, 275; in prison,
272; inhibited, 276; won over,
280, 377; attacked by Brute,
286-8, 293

Hereticate, 29, 248

Heretics. See Inquisition

Hermannus Allemannus, 53

Heron, John, 368

Hervey, William, 356

Higden, 441. See Trevisa, Poly-
chronicon

lliggs, John, 366

Hillman, Richard, 366

Hilman, T., 231 n., 6

Hilton, Walter, Tjn., 205, 333, 6,
342-3, 7, 392-4; Epistle on Mixed
Life, 217-20, 347 n.; Scale of
Perfection, 218, 323W., 331 n.

Himnielstiiv, 129

Hinton, books of, 1 74

Historia General. See Comestor

Holcote, Robert, 175

Holen, (rottschalk, 97

Hopton, John, 288

Horn, John, 233

Hosius, Stanislas, 383

Hostiensis, 34 ».

Houghton, 191 n.

Howton, John, 170

Huber, Martin, ii6«.

Hugutio (Etyviologicon), 426 n.

Hull, Eleanor, 341

Hun, Richard, jn., 14, 39M., 329,
369-70

Hunt, Walter, 176H.

Hus, 92, 106 n., 122, 240, 267, 356,
399-400

Hymmelstrasz, 129

476

INDEX

Ignorance, clerical, 25, 31, 45 w.. 57,
68, 73; lay, 25, 39, 56

Imitation of Christ, 115M.

Ine, king, 138 m.

Ingleby, 322

Injunctions, Royal, of 1538, 348-50;
of 1548, 349 w.; episcopal, 348-
50

Innocent II, 290, 414

Innocent III, low., i8n., 30-6,
56M., 74, 92-3, 245, 290, 327,
371-2, 388

Innocent IV, 76 .

Inquisition, 16; powers of, 85, 8;
in France, 28-30, 36-41, 85; in
Spain, 28, 48, 51-2; in Italy, 28,
41, 85; in the Empire, 28, 32-4,
60-4, 78, 83-8, lom.; in the
Netherlands, 90W.-91, 94 w.; in
England (episcopal), 233, 274,

308, 353-73. 399-401
Inquisitors. See Reiner; Toulouse;

Passau; Augsburg, David of;

Cistercian abbots ; Praeneste,

Guido of; Bourbon, Etienne de;

Gui, Bernard; Schoeneveld, Ey-

lardus; Kerling, Walter; Swabia,

James of; Walden
Institution, examination on, 158,

193-4
Isidore, of Seville, 167, 265, 451;
De Natali, 427

James I, of Aragon, 48

James I's Bible, 301

Jan and Roger, 73

Janov, Matthias of, 3W., 91-2

Jansenism, 104 «., 383-4

Jennings, John, 369

Jeremias, archdeacon of Rouen,
212

Jerome, S., 10, 12, 21, 2, 44M., 91,
3, 102, 118, 121, 137W., 167, 173,
5, 2567?., 261 w., 279M., 291, 3,
372, 8, 455-8; errors in transla-
tion, 133, 294-6, 444; Psalterium
Abbreviatum, 146; Prologus Ga-
leatus, 256, 444 M.; Epistolae, 403,
8, 417. 463

Jews, in Spain, 49, 50, 52-5

Joachim, abbot of Flora, 239 m.,
404 M.
^^ —Job, moralisation on. See Gregory I

John VIII, pope, 23

John XXII, pope, 238

John the Good, 20, 142 m., 221

John, king of Castile, 167 m.

John 'de Novo Lapide,' 91 w.

Jordan, i77«.

Joseph. See Story

Katerington, John, 186
Kaysersberg, Geiler von, 47, 106-8,

126; the Christian Pilgrimage, 107
Kempen, loi

Kerling, Walter, 83, 5W., 6, 8
Kilburn nunnery, 341 w.
Killaloe, bishop of, igSn.
King, William, 221 n.
King's Hall, 297 w.
Kirkby, dame Margaret, 144
Knighton's continuator, 232, 4,

239-40, 250, 278 )i., 377
Knychnicz, George of, 240, 295 m.
Koberger, Antonius, 123 m.

Lacy, John, 333

Lady, our, life of, 69, 72 n., 113, 130,

151-2, 154, ijgn., 180, 363; hours

of, 190, 222, 333, 7, 368
Lambert le Begue, 69-71
Landen, 116
Lanfranc, 181
Langland, 224

Langley, Thomas, 177M., 185 w.
Lanterne of Light, 15 w., 353 m., 6
Laon, Anselm of, 174, 424 w.
Lateran, third council of, 26, 42, 57,

65; fourth council of, 26, 56-7, 184
Latimer, sir Thomas, 374
La Tour-Landry, 180, 206-9, 222-4,

342
Lavenham, friar, 297, 379-81
Lay Folks Catechism, 141 «.
Lay Folks Mass Book, 138-9 m.,

212-4
Lectionary, 40 w., 136 w.
Ledesma, James, 383
Lee, archbishop, 348

bishop Rowland, 349

Legenda, 186, 392; Aurea, 151 «.,

331 M., 341 «., 2, 8n., 392-7
Legendary, 78, 333; South English,

342
Leicester, books of abbey, 178 «.,

33172.; castle of, 232; canon of,

253. See also Lollards

Henry, 186

Leo XII, 384

Leofric, bishop of Exeter, 138

Le Riche, Jean, 106

Leyden, 130

Liber Sextus, 87

Lichfield, diocese of, 360

Liege, 60, 69-71

Liere, 115

Life of Jesus (Pepysian MS.), 153

Lincoln, bishops of, 160, 182, 236,

364; minister, 349, 358; College,

358; S. Hugh of, 181; books of,

185, 221; archdeacon of, 186;

INDEX

477

chancellor of, 201; schools of,

193. 313

Lindisfarne gospels, 136-7

Lisle, Alain de, 18 w., 30 w., 200;
Ars praedicandi, 202

Litchwick, 186

Llanthony, Clement of, Umini ex
Quattuor, 152, 176-7, 302-3

Lollards. 3M., 12, 25, 9, 59-60, 78,
87 n., 131-3, 196-7; and Bible,
156, 165-6, 197; and English
Bible {see Purvey, Hereford),
299, 308, 334-6, 352-73; and
English plenaries, 335; English
tracts, 445; books, 352-73; Latin
writings, 361; Twenty-five Articles ,
308 «., 376 «., 461-2; disendow-
ment bill, 297, 355, 375-6. 380-1;
and mistranslation, 15, 230-1,
259, 371 ; and inquisition, 16, 233,
351-73; knights, 226-7, 243. 5-6,
8-9, 262, 278, 282, 299; trials,
228; how far orthodox, 28, 39 m.,
225; edit orthodox tracts, 141 w.,
6m., 263, 304; name, 70, 242 w.,
273-4; Palmer on, 421, 5; in the
Netherlands, 69-70, 89, 122, 308;
in Norfolk, 219 m., 355, 7-8;
Oxford 226, 232-40, 289-97,

303-4. 9. 314-5. 364. 377; Lei-
cester, 232, 4, 6, 9, 249, 278, 286;
Bristol, 276, 289, 357, 9, 363. 377;
London, 282-3, 28gn., igjn.,
355. 6, 364, 9. 374-6; Hereford,
286, 355; Lincoln, 286M., 356,
363-5; S. Albans, 327-8; Barnet,
328; Somerset, 328-9, 357, 364;
Colchester, 328 m.; Kent, 355;
Canterbury, 228, 358, 365; Not-
tingham, 356 w.; Scotland, 359;
Surrey, 359, 365; Litchfield, 360;
Ely, 363; Cambridge, 363; Hun-
tingdon, 363; Coventry, 364, 6;
Buckingham, 365 n. See also
Bible; Schools; Pecock; Thirty
Seven Cone. ; Tivelve Cone.

Lombard, Peter, 85, 310, 3; catena
on psalter, 144-5, ^75; Sentences,
104, 158, 163, 178, 182, 6, 191, 2,
411

Lombardy. See Bible, translations,
Italian

London, bishops of, 185, 283, 294,
350. 6-7, 369-70, 442; wills,
220-4, 393

Longchamps, William, 169, 185

Longinus, 152

Longland, bishop, 364, 6w.

Lorraine, i-jn., 30, 34 «.

Louis XI, 22 w.

Louis, S., 22 n.

Love, Nicholas, 55, 153; Mir r our,

i-jZH., 322-6, 333, 342-3
Liibeck Bible, 121 «.
Lucius III, 42
Luther, New Testament, low.,

35«., 121, 3, 390
Lutterworth, 232-3, 7, 9, 275
Lydgate, 147, 154, 181; English

psalms, 320-r, 336
Lydwin, S., 115W.
Lyndwood, 3W., 4, 9, 356, 371
Lyne, Roger, 333
Lyons, 25-8, 30, 42, 69, 229
Lyra, Nicholas de, 44, 85, 106 n.,

120M., 166-8, 175-6, 181, 242,

258, 265-6, 325, 376, 412-4, 440,

454; on Tetragrammaton, 421 «.;

on Legio, 428

Madrucci, cardinal, 50

Maerlant, 18 w., ign., 71-5, 85, 93,

149-50, 294, 441
Magdeburg, censor at, 126; synod

of, 1403, 127
Magic, 102
Maidstone, Clement, 340 «.

Richard, 147; Protectoriuni

Pauperis, 346 «.

Maimonides, 413 «.

Mainz, 33, 120, 124-6; Martin of,

78
Malherbi, Nicolo di, 44
Mallet, C, 383
Malmesbury, Robert of, 1 72

William of, 136, 169

Malon, J. B., 384
Malphus, Peter, 383

Man, Thomas, 368

William, 366

Manichaeans, 41-2
Manipulus Curatorunt. 343 w.
Manuale Curatorum, 128
Manuals, for women, 21-2; German,

85, 108, 126-30; French, 85.
Spanish, 55; Enghsh, 68, 199,
211-20, 343, 5-7; for laity, 56,
202, 211-20, 344-7; for priests,
136M., 158, 202, 343-4; official.
104, 141, 196-7; for religious, 172;
for preaching, 192, 200
Manuel des Pichiez, 149, 183, 204,

214. 394
Manuel II, 2gjn.
Map, Walter, 26-7
Marburg, 120; Conrad of, 60
Marguerite of Poland, 20
Marsh, Adam, 163
Mascall, bishop, 185 «.
Maynard, Ralph, 346 m.

478

INDEX

Mechthild, Revelations of, 115M.

Medicine, books of, 115M., 138 «.

Meissen, synod of 1504, 128

Melsaneby, Henry, 186

Melton, Sermo Exhortatarius, 197

Memingen, ii6n.

Memoriale credentium, 216

Menagier de Paris, 21 n.

Merita Missae, 213

Merswin, Rulman, 78

Merton College, 178 m., 235 w.

Methodius. See Cyril

Metz, archbishop of, ion., 29-33,
92, 3, 371-2; Waldensians at, 29,
36, 59-60, 245, 290, 326

Milan, heretics at, 41-2

Minden, Hermann of, 77, 187 m.

Miracle plays, 155, 324 m.; S.
Katherine, 169; Chester plays,
209-11, 329; York play, 333, 378;
5. Dionise, 363

Mirk, John, 204, 343-4; Manuale
Sacevdotum, 343; Instructions,
343; Liber Festivalis, 344

Mirror of Simple Souls, 348 n.

Mirrour. See Love

Mirrur. See Greatham

Missal, 40 n., 121 «., i$6n., 195

Modena, Bartholomew of, 44

Monk Bretton, 331 n.

Montesino, Ambrose de, 54 w.

Montfort, de, 149, 183, 205

Moon, Thomas, 358

Morden, James, 369
John, 368

More, sir Thomas, sees English
Bibles, I, 4, 6, jn., 173, 331; on
licenses, i, 8; discusses English
Bibles, 2-4, 7-9, 300, 319-20;
criticism of bis views, 9-16, 205,
291, 326, 9, 370-3: scheme for
presentation of Bibles, 348; on
Hun's Bible, 369-70; onTindale's,
438; Dialogue concerning Heresies,
1-12, 14-5, 349. See also Oxford,
council of; Hun; Erasmus

Moses Arragel, 53 «.

Mxigeln, Henry von, 85

Mungin, Ralph, 35G

Mynne, Wernerus, 129

Myroure, Sion, ^n., 321 w., 339-40,

342
Mystics, German, 75, 77-81, 218-20;
English, 218-20

Narbonne, disputation at, 18 n.;

archbishopric, 30, 8, 65
Nassau, John of, 74
Nassington, William of, 204, 215-6
Necelhorst, Hugo of, 130

Neercassel, John, 383-4

Neridono, Nicholas de, 44

Netherlands, 59, 69-74, 89-130

Newman, John, 367

Nicholas V, 51

Nicholas, Jean, 20 m.

Nicodemus, Gospel of, 114H., 140,

151. 154-5. 342, 363; in Latin,

180
Nider, John, 8ok., 82
Nigel, bishop of Ely, 169
Nisbet, Murdoch, 359
Noethern, Arnold of, 100
Nogent, Guibert de, 200
Northampton, schools, 194
Northburgh, Michael, 186
Northern Homily Collection, or verse

gospels, 78, 147-52, 200, 212, 288,

315-7
Norton, William, ij6n.

Norwich, diocese of, 357-8; verse

psalter, 173 w.
Nottingham, William of, 69 n.,

177
Nunneries and Bibles, 60, 5, 79, 98,

101-2, 109-17, 121-2; after 1408

in England, 320, 336-42. See also

Catalogues
Nuremberg, Dominican convent of,

7712., ioi«., Ill, 4, 5«., 341;

MSS, II2W., 117, 8; Bible, 123M.
Nutzlich . . . Buchlin, 1 29
Nymwegen, 115

Oberland, 122

Ockham, William of, 165

Odiham, 236

Oesterwic, Cornelius, 418 w.

Oldcastle, sir John, 231, 240, 287,

292. 351. 5. 7
Olivi, Peter John, 71, 82, 404
Ordinands, Anglo-Saxon, 135-6;

education of, 157-62, 4, 188-96;

numbers of, 159-60
Origen, 175, 385; Super Leviticum,

412, 4
Orivalle, Hugh de, 138
Orm, Ormulum, 148-9
Orval, Gilles d', 69
Cry, Matthew, 383
Osney, 172 «., 342
Oswald, S., 133
Osyth's. S., 357 w., 365
Oxford, council of 1222, 193; of

1408, 3-9, 12-14, 131, 295-7,

315, 319-20, 326, 371; discussion

over vernac. Bibles, 238, 289-97;

psalter, 143; university, 159-160,

2, 4, 172, 182, 3, 193, 235. See

also Lollards

INDEX

479

Pacheco, cardinal, 50-1
Padua, Marsiglio of, 226
Pagula, William de, 202 ; Ocitlus
Sacerdotis, Pars Oculi, 202,

343-4

Palmer, Thomas, 125 «., 133; de-
fends Hereford, 287-8, 293; de-
termination, 290—4, 317, 337, 401 ;
printed, 418-37; Payne and Pur-
vey's answer to it, 437

Paris, 36-7, 86, 92, 170; university
of, 103, 178, 182, 192

Parker, John, 276

Parliament, of 1395, 257-8, 265,
282-3, 374-6, 444; of 1401, 297 K.;
of 1410, 297, 375

Passau, anon, inquisitor of, 2gn.,
son., 6r-2, 88; Otto of, 80-1,
90M., 211, 219; Four and Twenty
Elders, 80, 211

Passavanti, J., 44-7, 125 w.

Passelewe, 183 n.

Passionate, 115M., 136-8

Patarini, 26, 41-2

Pateshull, Peter, 231 «., 374, 6m.

Patience, 147

Paul II, 50-1

Paul's, S., books of, 138, 331; trial
at, 284

Paul's Cross, 284-5, 292-7, 363-5,
370. See also Twelve Cone.

Payne, Peter, 232 m., 240; deter-
mination, 290-3, 356, gn., 437

Pecche, 278

Peckham, archbishop, 141 n., 6w.,
157, 184-5, 195-7. 9. 217; Ignor-
ancia sacerdotum, 196, 295; Liber
Pauperis, 346 n.

Pecock, bishop, 346 m., 350, 360-4;
Repressor, 361 k., zn.; Book of
Faith, 361 n., 2 w.

Pegna, F., ion., 34 «.

Pericope, 98, 100, 112 m.

Pert, John, 358

Peterborough, books of, 169-71, 3,
185; abbots, 1 70-1

Philip II, 53

Philip VI, 20

Philip, Thomas, 368

Phips, John, 367

Pie, Hugh, 358

Pilgrim's Progress, 153

Pisa, council of, 103

Place, Robert, 221 w.

Plenaries (epistles and gospels),
French, 23, -jn., 3on., 4«., 39-40;
Italian, 47; German, 64, 79-80,
2, 6, 96, 129, 273; Dutch, 98,
loi «., 115, 6, 373; Anglo-Saxon,
136; Middle-English verse, 147-

52; French verse, 149-50; English
prose, 315-8, 333, 345, 360

Poll-tax, 1377 and 1381, 159W.

Poore, bishop, 198

Pope, Edward, 368
Robert, 367-8

Pore Caitiff, 218 m., 342, 6, 393;
contents, 347 m.

Porete, Margaret, 71

Porree, Gilbert de la, 143, 303

Postills, 40«., 85, 127 ?2., 166-8,

175
Praeneste, Guido of, 33, 60
Prague, 85, 91, io6m.; Wycliffism

at, 225, 240, 278, 292, 4, 359, 373,

400; Jerome of, 240, 295 «.
Preaching, Waldensian, 26-7, 31,

33«., sn., 8, 40-1; lay, ion., 414;

Lollard, 283, 354
Presles, Raoul de, 20, 227
Prick of Conscience, 86, 204, 214-5,

333. 368, 392-4

Primer, Latin, 190, 2, 221, 2m.;
English, 320, 337-8, 342, 357,
368, 394-7

Privity of the Passion, 153 m.

Proven9al. See Bible, translations,
French

Pseudo-Dionysius, 75, 405, -jn.,
8n.

Pudsey, Hugh, 185

Purity, 147

Purvey, John, 46 w., 73-4, 9i«-.
99 n., 106 «., 133-4, 6, 140, 2,
6, 166, 181, 309, 312, 7, 360;
as (?) Pervie, 366, 378-9; at
Oxford, 233-8, 253-4; wrote
under set of "pseudonyms," 258,
275-7; author of General Pro-
logue and LV, 266-7, 35^. 376-81 ;
his twelve apologetic tracts, 266,
9, 270-4, 7, 303; his glossed
gospels, 267 «., 271,275-82, 303-4,
9. 334. 346, 379 «•. 445; Epilogue
to S. Matthew, 456-61, id. Pro-
logue, 456-7; his Apocalypse,
303; his De Versione Bibliorum,
(determination : Compendious
Treatise), 278, 282-3, 290-7,
344M., 4o6«., printed, 437-45;
his Sixteen Points, 284-5, 461-7;
and Pore Caitiff, 346-7; and
Twelve Conclusions, 376; and
Unutn ex Quattuor, 303; and
Fifty Merest es, 399; at Bristol,
289^., 357; imprisoned and re-
cants, 283-5, 9; confession, 380;
death, 297; Bale and Leland on,
399-401. See also Thir. Sev.
Cone. ; Twelve Cone.

48o

INDEX

Quesnel, pere, 383-4
Quiroga, cardinal, 53
Quivil, bishop, 196-7, 217

Raban Maur, 457-8

Rabbi Solomon, 167

Ralph ' de Rivo,' 91 n.

Ratisbon, synod of, 127 w., 8

Ravenser, Richard, 186

Reading, books of, 173

Recluses, 144, 232, 320-1

Redhead, William, 328

Refectory reading, at Nuremberg,
1 1 1-3, in Spec. S. Edmundi,
172-4; at Durham, 174; pseudo-
Bona Ventura, 174; S. Hugh and,
181

Regensburg, Berthold of, 63

Regent masters, 182, 289-92

Reiner, the Dominican, bin.

Rellach, John, 59 m., i 17-21

Repingdon, Philip, 232-6, 9, 308 w.,

377
Resly, John, 359
Revetour, William, 333
Rheims, S. Denis of, 179
Rhine district, 58-60, 68, 71, 5, 6,

81, 122
Rich, Edmund, 172; Speculum

Sancti Edmundi, 172-4, 392
Richard I, 169
Richard II, Bible, 221, 278; and

Lollards, 237, 257, 281-3, 8,

374-5, 444

Richard the hermit. See Rolle

Ridingfield, prioress of, 358

Riga, Petrus de, 179

Rigge, Robert, 231 w.

Rijmbijbel. See Comestor

Rivaulx, books, 138 n., 213 w.

Robert, dauphin of Auvergne,
2gn.

Rochester, books of, 170, 181, 5

Rolle, Richard, 77 w., 204, 333,
342-3, 7, 393 ; English psalter of,
13, 85, 6. 132 w., 140, 144-7, 221,
231, 250, 4-5, 263, 304, 331, 395.
442-3; used Bonaventura's Medi-
iationes, 153; Form of Perfect
Living, 215. See also Dirige

Romance (translations), 30, 4, 41,
8, 54, 60, 6«. See Bible, Dooks
of. Gospels, French.

Romaunt of the Rose, 153-4

Romenal, G. de, 170

Romsey, William, 178W.

Roodekloster, ii6n.

.Rotherham, 330

Rotlev, Martin, 85

Rudby, 203 n.

Rushworth gospels, 136
Russell, bishop, 364
Ruysbroeck, ii5n.
Rye, Margery de, 308 w.

Sabruguera, Romeu de, 54

Salisbury, schools of, 185; visita-
tion, 193; bishop of, 198, 348-50;
countess of, 221; earl of, 278;
John of, 181-2, 421 «.

Salvation, how much knowledge
necessary to, 45

Sancta Maria, Paul de, 167-8

Sanders, Alice, 368

Savonarola, 47

Sawtre, 283-4, 357 w-

Saxony, Ludolphus of, 175, 7

Say, John, 366

Schlotheim, Gieseler von, jgn.

Schoeneveld, Eylardus, 95 n.

Schools, for men, elementary or
abc, 188-90, 206-7, 9. 330;
grammar, 157-8, i6i, 189-92,
205-6, 9, 224, 330; grammar
masters, 3M., 57, 160, 191, 295,
330; cathedral or theology, 57,
157-8, 161. 175. 189-92, 194,
309-14, 330, Lincoln, 182, 194;
friary, 36, 161, 189-92; Domini-
can, 57, 77, 119, 191; monastic,
168-74, 189, 330-2; chantry,
190 M., 330, 350; for women,
grammar, zojn., 21 w.; elemen-
tary, 207, other teaching, 207-9.
Waldensian, 28, 9, 32-4, g, 42,
61, 228; Lollard, 228, 232, 308,
352, 7; "hohen schulen," iign.;
biblical translations in, 189-92,

330
Schwerin, synod of 1492, 127

Scrivener, John, 367
Thomas, 368

Scutken, John, 99

Sempringham, 204

Seneca, 439

Sens, 36, 414

Sentences, of Waldensians, 26; in
German, loi. See also Lom-
bard

Sermons, elements of the faith to be
expounded at, 126, 8, 139, 141,
184, 195-202, 21 1-7; attendance
at, urged, Germany, 127-9; epistles
and gospels to be expounded at,
313; indulgences for, 201; in
verse, 148, 244; Lollard, 249, 262,
295; fifteenth century, 344-5.
See also Vernacular; Manuals

Shaxton, bishop, 348-50

Shoemaker, Christopher the, 366

INDEX

481

Shoreham, William of, 146 m., 204
Simon the anker, 325; Fruit of

Redemption, 322 «., 325-6
Sion abbey. See Brigittines
Sixtus IV, 52
Skyrlaw, Walter, 185 w.
Smith, bishop, 364

Henry, 363

John, 366 w.

Thomas, 357

William, 232, 275, 8, 288,

400 «.

Snettisham, 203
Somerset, duke of, 357
Southern Legendary, 151—2
Southwick, John, 366
Sparke, Richard, 363

Robert, 363

William, 363

Speculum Curatorum, 202 n., 343
Speculum Devoiorum, 325 w.
Speculum Humanae Salvationis, 179,

181
Speculum Marie Virginis, ijgn.
Speculum Peccatorum, 73 «, 129,

216, 363, 393
Speculum. See also Beauvais, Vin-
cent of; Rich, Edmund; St-Cher;

Watton; Waldby
Speyer, 120
Spiegel der Siinder, 128
Stafford, bishop, 328
Stakelwegghe, Hermann, gin.
St- Amour, William de, 346 w.
Staphylus, Frederick, 383, 389-91
Stapledon, bishop, 184-5
Stapleton, Thomas, 389
Stationers, 20, 65, 215
St-Cher, Hugh of, 174-5, 229;

Postilla, 421-2, 430; Speculum

Ecclesiae, 202
Stella Clericorum, 34312.
Stephen, king 169
Stillington, bishop, 364
Stokes, Peter, 235-6
Stoneham, Robert, 203
Story of Joseph, 393
Stourton, William, 289
Strabo, Walafrid, 174
Strassburg, 33, 59, 60, 78, 106, 120,

303 w.; Mentel of, 121, 3W.;

synod of 1335, 126 w.
Stury, sir Richard, 237, 278, 282-3,

374-5. 380 M.
Sudbury, archbishop, 233
Surgant, Ulric, 128
Surius, Lawrence, 383
Susannah, 147
Suso, 75; Eternal Wisdom, 113, 5 «.,

342. 397

Sutor. See Erasmus
Swabia, James of, loi
Swallow, Stephen, 364
Sweeting, WiHiam, 366
Swinderby, the hermit, 232, 6-7,

276, 286, 377
Swine, vicar of, 202 n., 341 n.
Sy, Jean de, 2on., 142 m.
Sydrach, ii5«.
Symeon, Geoffrey, 363

Tarragona, synod of 1233, 34«., 48,

52, 61; of 1317, 48
Tatian, 55«.; Diatessaron, 176
Tauler, 75-8, 115M.
Tavera, 7

Taylor, William, 294 «., 356 «.
Templars, 170
Tepl MS., 64-8, 117, 298
Tertiaries, 29, 49, 71, 6, 84^., 113,5
Tetragrammaton, 421-2
Textus, 3«., 137, 8n., 170, 184;

bare text, 104, 5, 6w., 141, 145-7,

272, 280, 8, 298; of gospels, 125,

8, 169-70, 309; of Bible, 127, 147,

163. 5-7. 171. 258, 295-7, 304
Thaxted, vicar of, 356
Thirty Seven Conclusions {Ecclesiae

Regimen), 266, 282-3, 374-6,

379-81
Thomas, S., of Canterbury, 183, 274
Thoresby, archbishop William, 140

7, 159, 196, 217, 442
Thoring, Matthew, 168 m.
Thorn, Nicholas, 170, 220 m.
Thorpe, William, 228, 233 «., 4,

284-5. 292, 321"., 353-5, 400M.,

438, 462
Ticonius, io6m., 181, 265, 411, 456
Tille, John, friar, 294, 317, 438,

442
Tindale, 2-6, 14, 15, 256 «., 297 «.,

348, 351. 360, 370-1. 438
Tonibe, Jacob van, 99«., 383
Tomson, Stephen, 334
Toul. 30, 59

Toulouse, inquisitor of, 16, 27 h.,
39, 71, 178; archbishopric, 30,
40«., 48; synod of, 35-9, 48»/.,
51, 61, 85«., 6, 8, 372
Tracher, John, 367
Trattato delta Scienza, 44-7
Trent, council of, 50-1, 319
Trevenant, Register of, 3M., 286-8
Trevisa, John, 131-6, 143, 5, 154,
250, 271, 299-302, 372; Poly-
chronicon, 13, 131, 3«., 300-2,
380, 428 «.; Dialogue between a
Lord and a Clerk, 130-4, 142-3,
250. 299-302

482

INDEX

Trier, 33, 60-4, 71, 88; synod of
1231, 48W., 60; of 1310, 81;
censor at, 120

Trillek, bishop 160

Tunstall, archbishop, 297 w.

Turin, 40

Turlupins, 387

Turners, 130

Tuscan gospels. See Bible, books of

Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards,
257-8, 265, 282-3, 374-6

Tykiil, Thomas, 368

Tylsworth, William, 365

Ulphilas, 19, 93

Universities, 158-63, 182

Unum ex Quattuor, Lollard, 281 m.,

302-3. See also Llanthony
Urban V., 8i, 3
Usus Ordinis Cisterciensis, 172
Utrecht, 74, gin., 5W., 100W.-102,

ii6n.

Vadstena. See Brigittines

Valencia, Bible, 44 n., 54

Var, synod of 1368, 68

Vaudois, 27 w., 30, 2. See also
Waldensians

Venice, 124; Marino of, 44; Fre-
derick of, 44

Vernacular, hymns, 115 w.; missals,
103, 113, 142; offices, ii4«., 6n.,
124, 333; prayers, 62 w., 87 w., 95,
113, 183-5, 212, 222, 350; by the
Lollards, 352, 7; bidding prayers,
139,212; Rules, 113, 173; sermons,
126, 127; books as heretical, 327-
8, 350, 6, 366-9

Verona, edict of, 26

Victorines, 75

Vices and Virtues, 96, 214, 342,

393
Vienna, 81, 240, 291-2
Vienne, Hugo of. See St-Cher
Vincent, Thomas, 368
Visigothic Latin Bible, 52-3, 65-5
Vitry, Jacques de, 200
Volkensdorf, Elizabeth von, 130
Voragine, Jacobus de, 426 «.
Vornken, William, 99
Voysey, bishop, 348-9
Vredendal, ii6n.

Waddington, William of, 204
Waldby, John, 115; Speculum Vitae,

204, 215, 322W.

Waldegrave, 203 n.

Walden, Thomas, 233, 240, 250-1,

292, 5. 7. 346 «., 364, 374, 377-9
Waldensians, 2, 12, 5, 8n., 350,

385, 7; in France, 25-41, 178,
182, 197, 245-6, 228-9; in Italy,
41-8, 372-3; in Spain, 48-9; in
Empire and Netherlands, 59, 71,
83 w., 91, loin., 4, 7, 115M., 121,
372
Waldo, Peter, 26, 42, 63, 69, 225,

245
Waltham abbey, books, 137-8
Walton, Roger, 333
Wapene Martijn, 73-4
Ward, Bennett, 368
Warham, archbishop, 331
Warwick, earl of, 34 w., 221
Watton, John, Speculum Christiani,

^346

Waytestathe, Richard, 232

Weert, Jan de, 73-4, 149

Wenzel, 86, 298; Wenzel Bible, 20,
86

Welles, Hugo de, 160

Wells, Somerset, books of, 138 w.;
diocese of, 328-9, 357- 3^4
John, 27 w., 221

Wercborch, John of, 91 n.

West Hythe, 289

Westminster abbej', books, 137-8,
287; sermon, 278-9. See also
Twelve Cone.

Widemere, Thomas, 368

Wile, Thomas de la, 185

Wills, and book-ownership, 17, 163,
8, 185-7, 214, 220-4, 288-9, 329,
334-6, 342-3, 391-8; in French,
205; in English, 205

Winchester, bishops of, 135, 379;
books of, 169, 185

Windesheim, 99, loi

Wittenberg, ii6n.

Wolfenbiittel MS., 64, 11 7-8

Wonnenstein, 115

Woodford, William, 418 m.

Woodward, John, 360

Worcester cathedral, books, 137

Worms, 120

Worstede, John, 221

Wulfsine, 136

Wurzgartlein, 129

Wyche, Richard, 359

Wycliffe, John, tradition that he
translated the Bible, 2-6, 13,
14 w., 225, 356, 377; evidence that
he "instigated" a translation,
238-40, 250-r, 310; refers to need
of biblical translations, 240-9;
determined against Wells, 27«. ;
his teaching, 91, 122, 153, 165,
225-31, 314-5; errors condemned
at Constance, 106 w., at Oxford,
297; on FitzRalph, 142; on

INDEX

483

friars, 148 w.; his followers, 156,
206, 231-8, 311, 356-7. 360, 9;
sermons, 315-7; Latin works, 378;
De Veritate S. Scripturae, 240-1,
268-70, 400; De Officio Pastorali,
266, 268-70, 378; Trialogus, 356,
418 «.; English works, 241 w.;
The holy prophet David saith,
241-2, 268, 274, 445-56; death,
131. See also Bible

Wykeham, William of, 185 w., 209,
226, 235-6, 330

Wyllis, James, 363

Ximenes, Francis, 47 w., 55
Ydros, Bernardus, 26

York, dean of, 185; archbishop of,
2j8n., 348-9; chancellor of, 186;
advocate of, 204, 215; chaplains
of, 203 «., 288, 333; S. Mary's
abbey, 204, books of, 138; monk
of, 141 w.; wills of, 220-4; duke
of, 282; schools of, 313; duchess

of. 343
Young, John, 357

Zarter, Peter, 118, 121

Zattelin, Hans, ii6w.

Zerbolt, Gerard, 90, 5M., yn.. 115 n.

Zurich, 123 «.

Zutphen, loo-i, 294

Zwingli, 123 n.

Zwolle, 89, 99-101

CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY J. B. PEACE, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

v^ i^/v^'

BS
455
D4
cop. 2

Deanesly, Margaret
The Lollard Bible

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